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The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.

Ed Koch

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Ed Koch
Age: 88 †
Born: 1924
Born: December 12
Died: 2013
Died: February 1
Film Critic
Former United States Representative
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Edward Irving Ed Koch
Edward I. Koch
Edward Irving Koch
Graduates
Convocation
Match
Lighted
Memorable
Diploma
Inspire
Commencement
Begin
Fuse
Education
Fireworks
Success
Congratulations
Today
Graduation

More quotes by Ed Koch

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Be different-if you don't have the facts and knowledge required, simply listen. When word gets around that you can listen when others tend to talk, you will be treated as a sage.
Ed Koch
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In a neighborhood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, much better than a raw or festering wound.
Ed Koch
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I have a social life. But I don't discuss it.
Ed Koch
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I don't believe that in our society that we should have guns.
Ed Koch
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I'm not the type to get ulcers. I give them.
Ed Koch
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I said, to be a New Yorker you have to live here for six months, and if at the end of the six months you find you walk faster, talk faster, think faster, you're a New Yorker.
Ed Koch
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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.
Ed Koch
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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.
Ed Koch
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When I was first elected I got 50% of the vote in '77 in the general election. In '81 I got 75%. In '85, I got 78%. No mayor has ever gotten that high a vote. So it was not an issue. Except for people who were very hostile to me. They thought they would injure me.
Ed Koch
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Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It's sterile. It's nothing. It's wasting your life.
Ed Koch
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In action be primitive in foresight, a strategist.
Ed Koch
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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.
Ed Koch
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However, they ignore the fact that the First Amendment is intended to protect only against government sanctions for exercising free speech rights, not private actions.
Ed Koch
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Water, water, everywhere, Atlantic and Pacific. But New York City's got them beat, Our aqua is terrific!
Ed Koch
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The art of creation is older than the art of killing.
Ed Koch
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There's enormous energy required to carry grudges - enormous energy! And I'm getting too old to expend my energy that way, cause I think every person has a limited amount of energy. So I have given up all grudges.
Ed Koch
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I want to come back as me.
Ed Koch
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The key to success in politics: Never forget, seldom forgive.
Ed Koch
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Whenever I leave Manhattan, I get the bends!
Ed Koch
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I never doubted that I would be a good mayor. I never did.
Ed Koch