There aren't any liberals left in New York. They've all been mugged by now.

Community-based policing has now come to mean everything. It's a slogan. It has come to mean so many different things that people who endorse it, such as the Congress of the United States, do not know what they are talking about.

I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care

I believe that the high rates of property crime (and some of the increase in violent crime) are part of the price you pay for freedom.

Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

[in 1998] I know my political ideas affect what I write but I've tried to follow the facts wherever they land. Every topic I've written about begins as a question. How do police departments behave? Why do bureaucracies function the way they do? What moral intuitions do people have? How do courts make their decisions? What do blacks want from the political system? I can honestly say I didn't know the answers to those questions when I began looking into them.

In terms of other functions, we are making a mistake about insisting on a public school monopoly.