31 Quotes by Murray Kempton

The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost.

To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that is has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all.

As an organized political group, the Communists have done nothing to damage our society a fraction as much as what their enemies have done in the name of defending us against subversion.

The Communists offer one precious, fatal boon: they take away the sense of sin.

To be a gentleman is to be oneself, all of a seam, on camera and off.

There are things a man must not do even to save a nation.

A revolution requires of its leaders a record of unbroken infallibility; if they do not possess it, they are expected to invent it.

Every social war is a battle between the very few on both sides who care and who fire their shots across a crowd of spectators.

The world of shabby gentility is like no other; its sacrifices have less logic, its standards are harsher, its relation to reality is dimmer than comfortable property or plain poverty can understand.