We have not always agreed, but I have said repeatedly and publicly many times that Al Sharpton has never counseled violence, but he gets blamed for a whole lot of that.

Well, I think I am a very, very lucky person. I'm very fortunate.

Some of us claim that New York City is the capital of the country, indeed the capital of the world. Now, that may be a bit much for those who don't come from New York, but clearly we are an important city for reasons of our cultural advantages.

I'm confident that, were I mayor, I would do some things differently than he has. But I think there's a world of difference between him and his immediate predecessor.

The people really are what make New York City great.

I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.

Well, I was about six or seven, and my mother and father separated.

I finished law school in '56, but I was working two jobs.

I went to Israel when the missiles were falling there.

The art and culture that is New York, communications, finance, all these things help make up New York. The rest of the country should be happy that we are what we are.

Well, I'm not sure, but of one thing I am certain: History judges one differently than contemporary observers, and so I think that as time passes, I hope that not me personally so much, but our administration will be seen for some of the things that we accomplished.

Today, certain people file for bankruptcy, businesses and individuals, and it no longer has the stigma it once had. Now it's almost considered wise, a way to regroup and come back again.

But I make the observation that no one of us would do things exactly alike.

So it's a mistake for someone to think that they bailed New York out. They did assist us, for which we are grateful, but it's a mistake to say we bailed New York out by giving them a grant of money to help those poor people who throw it away on welfare.

This is about these particular candidates in this particular year. That's what motivates me.

We borrowed money, it helped us with bonds and what not, and the Federal Government backed it, but it was a guarantee, it was not a grant. And we not only paid it off, but we paid it off ahead of time.

As a matter of fact, even when I finished law school, I had no notion of public service then.

But the courts have dismissed the lawsuits against me and Lee Brown.

Children are amazing, and while I go to places like Princeton and Harvard and Yale, and of course I teach at Columbia, NYU, and that's nice and I love students, but the most fun of all are the real little ones, the young ones.

We have not always agreed, but I have said repeatedly and publicly many times that Al Sharpton has never counseled violence, but he gets blamed for a whole lot of that.

In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.

I love children, and most of my involvement now has to do with children or youth programs.

There is no point in me worrying about what Bloomberg or Badillo will do.

And I tell people I'm in charge of children, children I haven't even met yet.

You can't twist Al Sharpton's arm.

My mother came here to New York. She and my grandmother were domestics, cooking, cleaning for other people.

I went downtown as a lawyer and then I worked in a liquor store at night, as I had done all through law school. And so when I got to the point where I could give up the night job, I joined the political club.

And, as a matter of fact, I am the chairman of the Amadou Diallo Foundation.

A fair observer only has to ask: If there is violence, who profits?

I wanted to make the violence beautiful in order to heighten our revulsion.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

Kids shouldn't see all the violence they do these days. But the industry just doesn't care.

I found a religion that blended scientific reason with spiritual reality in a unifying faith far removed from the headlines of violence, destruction and terrorism.

The violence betwen women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.

Violence is for mugs. War is for mugs.

I think there's a natural system in your own head about how much violence the scene warrants. It's not an intellectual process, it's an instinctive process.

Violence is a tool of the ignorant.

I think movies glamorize violence, in the sense that they make it in a way that it's either cool or funny.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy.

While the vast majority of hackers may be disinclined towards violence, it would only take a few to turn cyber terrorism into reality.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.

Random violence is incredibly infectious.

I think the suffering, violence and cruelty and Guantanamo and the rest is going to go on and on in Iraq.

Violence is always the last option, but if that time comes, it is the ONLY option.

God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.

The problem to me is violence. It's not cool to kill somebody or hurt people.