All Murray Kempton Quotes
- 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… Accept
- The fates have a way of demanding of a man that he suffer his greatest moments all by himself; being lone seems as often attendant… All
- It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience. Convenience
- A political convention is just not a place where you come away with any trace of faith in human nature. Any
- A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded. Battlefield
- Any experience deeply felt makes some men better and some men worse. When it has ended, they share nothing but the recollection of a commitment… Any
- By adherence to a special set of rules, the child of the shabby-genteel can sometimes leap across the time which has passed by his family… Across
- 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… Adulterated
- A neighborhood is where, when you go out of it, you get beat up. Beat
- No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting. Ever Uninteresting
- The beauty of a strong, lasting commitment is often best understood by men incapable of it. Beauty
- The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost. Faces
- It is a measure of the Negro's circumstance that, in America, the smallest things usually take him so very long, and that, by the time… America
- As an organized political group, the Communists have done nothing to damage our society a fraction as much as what their enemies have done in… Communism
- The Communists offer one precious, fatal boon: they take away the sense of sin. Boon
- To be a gentleman is to be oneself, all of a seam, on camera and off. All
- It is not the least of a martyr's scourges to be canonized by the persons who burned him. Burned
- There are things a man must not do even to save a nation. Inspirational
- A revolution requires of its leaders a record of unbroken infallibility; if they do not possess it, they are expected to invent it. Expected
- Every social war is a battle between the very few on both sides who care and who fire their shots across a crowd of spectators. Across
- The world of shabby gentility is like no other; its sacrifices have less logic, its standards are harsher, its relation to reality is dimmer than… Comfortable
- There is a raging tiger inside every man whom God put on this earth. Every man worthy of the respect of his children spends his… Building
- A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature. Any
- We are a government of laws. Any laws some government hack can find to louse up a man who's down. Any