70 Quotes by Edward I. Koch

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

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

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

I want to come back as me.

I have a social life. But I don’t discuss it.

In action be primitive; in foresight, a strategist.

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.

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.

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