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.

— Edward I. Koch

Edward I. Koch Quotes

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

— Edward I. Koch

Citizens, thank you for all your birthday wishes. I am 88 years old today and still lucky to live in the greatest city in the world.

— Edward I. Koch

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow as Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me the pot’s at the other end.

— Edward I. Koch

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.

— Edward I. Koch

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.

— Edward I. Koch

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.

— Edward I. Koch

If they don’t want to pay for it, they can stop drinking it.

— Edward I. Koch

Life is indeed precious, and I believe the death penalty helps affirm this fact.

— Edward I. Koch

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

— Edward I. Koch

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

— Edward I. Koch

Carter couldn’t elect a dog-catcher.

— Edward I. Koch

To learn something new every day is still exciting!

— Edward I. Koch

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.

— Edward I. Koch

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.

— Edward I. Koch

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.

— Edward I. Koch

There’s a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies – the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don’t like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It’s not the coin of the realm in politics.

— Edward I. Koch

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.

— Edward I. Koch

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

— Edward I. Koch

It is not possible to remake the world. You can fix parts, but you can’t remake the world.

— Edward I. Koch

If you don’t like the President, it costs you 90 bucks to fly to Washington to picket. If you don’t like the governor, it costs you 60 bucks to fly to Albany to picket. If you don’t like me – 90 cents.

— Edward I. Koch
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