Words matter. These are the best Ed Koch Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I never doubted that I would be a good mayor. I never did.
My brain is good, but my body is deteriorating. I probably have another two or three years. Or I can pass tomorrow, but it doesn’t make a difference to me.
It happens that I’m heterosexual, but I don’t care about that. I do care about protecting the rights of 10 percent of our population who are homosexual and who don’t have the ability to protect their rights.
I probably enjoy campaigning more than most other people in public office because I like people and I enjoy going out there and telling people what I’ve done.
I injured myself politically when I took on Jesse Jackson’ in the 1988 presidential campaign. I was too strident. I didn’t recognize the emotional tie that he had with all black voters.
I’m coming to the end of my life. I do reflect on what I’ve done for the 85 years that I have been given so far. And I’m proud of what I’ve done.
In action be primitive; in foresight, a strategist.
If they don’t want to pay for it, they can stop drinking it.
People get tired of you. So they decided to throw me out. And so help me God, as the numbers were coming in, I said to myself, ‘I’m free at last.’
I’m just a simple Jewish boy from the Bronx.
I’m confident President Obama will continue his unambiguous commitment to the Jewish state in his second term.
When I was first elected I got 50% of the vote in ’77 in the general election. In ’81 I got 75%. In ’85, I got 78%. No mayor has ever gotten that high a vote. So it was not an issue. Except for people who were very hostile to me. They thought they would injure me.
There was always a love-hate relationship with New York in the rest of the country, but I made them feel more love than hate.
I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish – occasionally I do windows.
Water, water, everywhere, Atlantic and Pacific. But New York City’s got them beat, Our aqua is terrific!
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow as Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me the pot’s at the other end.
The very fact that I became mayor in 1977 conveys how you can’t figure out what the people will do. Nobody thought I would be elected. When I entered I got four percent of the vote in the first poll, four percent.
Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It’s sterile. It’s nothing. It’s wasting your life.
I enjoyed my stay in the Congress. Most people do not. And too many people who have been elected really don’t understand the nature of government.
I was drafted into the Army when I was 19 and came out at age 22. Most people that I knew didn’t think they’d come home alive. I didn’t think I would either, so I was happy when I did.
There’s a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies – the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don’t like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It’s not the coin of the realm in politics.
I changed the city of New York. I gave people back their morale.
The best way to lose weight is to close your mouth – something very difficult for a politician. Or watch your food – just watch it, don’t eat it.
Stereotypes lose their power when the world is found to be more complex than the stereotype would suggest. When we learn that individuals do not fit the group stereotype, then it begins to fall apart.
I’m not the type to get ulcers. I give them.
If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.
I think I have a very good reputation amongst the gay population and among the whole country because I stood up on the issue of gay rights. It is not easy to stand up on that issue when you are single and male in New York City. I did it anyway.
In a neighborhood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, much better than a raw or festering wound.
I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.
I’m sure that people who elected me, some of them thought I was gay, some of them thought I wasn’t gay, and most of them didn’t care.
The person who is bent on killing you will follow you wherever you are.
No, I am not a homosexual. If I were a homosexual, I would hope I would have the courage to say so. What’s cruel is that you are forcing me to say I am not a homosexual. This means you are putting homosexuals down. I don’t want to do that.
How’m I doing?
The art of creation is older than the art of killing.
When all are wrong, everyone is right.
