"Once let a man grow up amidst Brooklyn’s cobblestones, with the odor of Newton Creek and Gowanus Canal ever in his nostrils, and there’s no place in the world for him except Brooklyn."

“Say, I don’t wish I was a poet, for if I was, I guess I’d be livin’ in a garret on no dollars a week instead of runnin’ a great contractin’ and transportation business which is doin’ pretty well, thank you; but, honest, now, the notion takes me sometimes to yell poetry of the red-hot-hail-glorious-land kind when I think of New York City as a state by itself.”

“Isn’t it enough to make a man sour on his country when he wants to serve it and won’t be allowed unless he answers a lot of fool questions about the number of cubic inches of water in the Atlantic and the quality of sand in the Sahara desert?”

“The most successful saloonkeepers don’t drink themselves and they understand that my temperance is a business proposition, just like their own.”

“Jimmy O’Brien brought the manufacture of “Democracies” down to an exact science, and reduced the cost of production so as to bring it within the reach of all. Any man with $50 can now have a “Democracy” of his own.”

“The politician who steals is worse than a thief. He is a fool. With the grand opportunities all around for the man with a political pull, there’s no excuse for stealin’ a cent.”

“Putin’ on style don’t pay in politics.”