No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.

- Murray Kempton

America... an economic system prouder of the distribution of its products than of the products themselves.

- Murray Kempton

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 life building inside …

- Murray Kempton

A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton

A revolution requires of its leaders a record of unbroken infallibility; if they do not possess it, they are expected to invent it.

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton

We are all addicts in various stages of degradation where I live on the Upper West Side, some to heroin, some to small dogs, and some to the New York…

- Murray Kempton

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

- Murray Kempton