Ed Koch Quotes - Page 3

I don't believe that in our society that we should have guns.

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 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 probably have another two or three years. Or I can pass tomorrow, but it doesn't make a difference to me.

I love being the mayor. I want to be the mayor forever.

The knife of corruption endangered the life of New York City. The scalpel of the law is making us well again.

I changed the city of New York. I gave people back their morale.

However, they ignore the fact that the First Amendment is intended to protect only against government sanctions for exercising free speech rights, not private actions.

We're in the hands of the state legislature and God, but at the moment, the state legislature has more to say than God.

Maybe he just looks good compared to the bores he's running against.

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.

Jews have always thought that having someone elevated with his head above the grass was not good for the Jews. I never felt that way. I believe that you have to stand up.

God gave me a very good hand to play over my 88 years. I have no regrets.

The Chinese describe themselves as political refugees. Many base that claim on China's strict population laws, which allow them to have only one child. But if we accept them as bona fide political refugees for that reason, doesn't it follow that people living in countries where abortion is illegal (such as Ireland and Poland) should also receive political asylum? After all, their country's policy is forcing them to give birth to unwanted children.

I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

I happen to believe that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. It’s whatever God made you. 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.

Whenever I leave Manhattan, I get the bends!

If you turn your back on these people, you yourself are an animal. You may be a well-dressed animal, but you are nevertheless an animal.

There's enormous energy required to carry grudges - enormous energy! And I'm getting too old to expend my energy that way, cause I think every person has a limited amount of energy. So I have given up all grudges.

When I came in, the city was on the edge of bankruptcy. I'm proud of what I did. I built the foundation that mayors after me built upon - particularly Bloomberg. But the foundation was essential because if it hadn't occurred, we would have been another Detroit.

I'm just a simple Jewish boy from the Bronx.

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.

I never doubted that I would be a good mayor. I never did.

We should sell them to our worst enemies, the Russians and the Cubans.