Murray Kempton

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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