Ed Koch Quotes

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'm not the type to get ulcers. I give them.

Should we be rewriting history just to make people feel good? That's not history, that's psychiatry.

I can explain it to you, but I can't comprehend it for you.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

I said, to be a New Yorker you have to live here for six months, and if at the end of the six months you find you walk faster, talk faster, think faster, you're a New Yorker.

You don't have to love them. You just have to respect their rights.

Be different-if you don't have the facts and knowledge required, simply listen. When word gets around that you can listen when others tend to talk, you will be treated as a sage.

But enough of me. Lets talk about you. What do you think of me?

You punch me, I punch back. I do not believe it's good for one's self-respect to be a punching bag.

Don't tell me this is a difficult problem. If it weren't difficult, it wouldn't be a problem.

...the mayor should not be advancing a policy that encourages [illegal] immigrants to think of New York City as their safe haven.

[The UN should remain in New York] because every country needs a cesspool. And the UN is always interesting as a theater of the absurd.

To learn something new every day is still exciting!

I'm not an author, but before I became mayor, I wasn't a mayor.

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 wake up every morning and say to myself, Well, I'm still in New York. Thank you, God.

...what about the millions of poor in this country who desperately need assistance and services to help bring them out of poverty? Shall they go to the back of the line? and shall those who have made a dramatic illegal entry, who would normally not be entitled to government assistance, or even entry itself, be put at the front?

I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.

Unless they can immediately demonstrate a credible fear of persecution, why shouldn't these people be returned at once to the country from which they embarked - whether it be their home country or a stopover point - at the expense of the airline that brought them? All appeals would then be made from the country to which they have been returned.

Tree killing is arborcide.

If I were running against Chuck Schumer. I would take every one of his Sunday press releases - and there are 52 for as many years as he's been there - and I would ask, 'How many of the things he said he was proposing became law?' I doubt many.

Like many others, I'm deeply sympathetic to the huge numbers of people looking to come here today to escape suffering and poverty in their own lands. But as a country, we cannot afford to have a total open-door policy without any restrictions on entry.

If you seek violence, we will seek to put you in jail.