Murray Kempton

A neighborhood is where, when you go out of it, you get beat up.

We are a government of laws. Any laws some government hack can find to louse up a man who's down.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things.

No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.

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.

The beauty of a strong, lasting commitment is often best understood by men incapable of it.