In a neighborhood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, much better than a raw or festering wound.
Interpretation
Healing and care are essential in both life and community.
This quote by Ed Koch emphasizes the importance of addressing and caring for wounds, whether physical or metaphorical, in our lives and neighborhoods. It suggests that having a clean and well-managed situation is far better than allowing problems to fester and worsen, highlighting the value of proactive care and attention to our surroundings and relationships.
In practice
During a community meeting about neighborhood safety, this quote can inspire teamwork and care.
No, I am not a homosexual. If I were a homosexual, I would hope I would have the courage to say so. What's cruel is that you are forcing me to say I am not a homosexual. This means you are putting homosexuals down. I don't want to do that.
The knife of corruption endangered the life of New York City. The scalpel of the law is making us well again.
Have confidence in your decisions. Make them expeditiously, and stay with them as long as you believe you are correct no matter what others say. However, when you conclude you were in error, do not hesitate to announce the error publicly and change course.
I was not afraid of the press or the militants. It was uncomfortable, but I was not afraid. With respect to the press, I knew I knew more than they knew about city matters. With respect to the militants, I understood it. I mean, everybody believed in those days that they were being screwed, you know, that somebody was getting ahead of them.
A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.
Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.
Readers no longer need novelists to tell us what it's like to cross the world on a ship or fight a war. In the twenty-first century, we get that information in other ways. The thing that's still a mystery to us is the human heart. What we want is to understand people, what they're doing, and why they're doing it.
The sage attends to the belly, and not to what he sees.
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