l have no fear of change as such and, on the other hand, no liking for it merely for its own sake.

I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.

When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax.

Those who can, build. Those who can't, criticize.

If the ends don't justify the means, then what does?

Every true New Yorker believes with all his heart that when a New Yorker is tired of New York, he is tired of life.

[It is] the most hideous waterfront structure ever inflicted on a city by a combination of architectural conceit and official bad taste. the Cathedral of Asphalt.

Here the skeptic finds chaos and the believer further evidence that the hand that made us is divine.

I have long since abandoned the notion that higher education is essential to either success or happiness. Hothouses of learning do not always grow anything edible.

He continued to be an infant long after he ceased to be a prodigy.

If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you're going to have a musical comedy administration.

Little girls get hurt when they play grown-up games.

Like father like son.

I don't know anybody who is raising their hand saying, "Oh God, I love being vulnerable and needy."

The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.

Again I entered my smithy to work and forge something from the noble material of time past.

I was hopeless at high school - I failed everything but Latin.

I'm not perfect, either. In the end, it's only God's judgement that matters, and I've learned enough to know that no one can presume to know the will of God.

Bookshops are infested with ideas. Books are quivering, murmuring creatures.

There is nothing steadfast in life but our memories. We are sure of keeping intact only that which we have lost.

America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.