No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton

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.

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton

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.

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton