Quotes by Murray Kempton

About Murray Kempton:

James Murray Kempton was an influential American journalist and social and political commentator. He won a National Book Award in 1974 (category, "Contemporary Affairs") for The Briar Patch: The People of the State of New York versus Lumumba Shakur, et al. Reprinted, 1997, with new subtitle The Trial of the Panther 21.) He won a Pulitzer Prize (category, "Commentary") in 1985 "for witty and insightful reflection on public issues in 1984 and throughout a distinguished career."
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Each of us lives with a sword over his head. There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who cannot. Those who cannot are not necessarily better than those who can. But they are the creators of the special myth of their time, because any myth...

Murray Kempton

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 and function in the real world without doing violence to the hopes his mother held out for him. But those who ca...

Murray Kempton

When they began, they could not have thought that it would end like this, because their time seemed to them as simple as a flame. We know now that it was a very complicated time and that they were more complicated people than they knew.

Murray Kempton

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 in which each was tested and to some degree found wanting. [...] The consequences of the journey change th...

Murray Kempton

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

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

To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that it has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all.

Murray Kempton

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

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

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

Murray Kempton

No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.

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

Author Bio

  • NameMurray Kempton
  • DescriptionAmerican journalist
  • BornDecember 16, 1917
  • DiedMay 5, 1997
  • ProfessionJournalist
  • AwardsGeorge Polk Award; Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award; National Book Award