David Dinkins Quotes

How can you worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?

I know people think I'm a stupid little street queen out there begging for change cause there's nothing else she knows how to do.

Sometimes, poor people don't smell too good, so love can have no nose.

Most people, if you live in a big city, you see some form of schizophrenia every day, and it's always in the form of someone homeless. 'Look at that guy - he's crazy. He looks dangerous.' Well, he's on the streets because of mental illness. He probably had a job and a home.

Telly never has any smart, amusing intellectuals living on a council estate.

I think clever people think that poor people are stupid.

The public thinks that homelessness is about not having any accommodation to go to.

I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.

Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.

But where else should they sleep?

No one should be richer than a ten millionaire and no one should be without a home.

Italians are a riffraff of desperate scoundrels, ex-convicts and jailbirds.

There are thousands on thousands in New York who have no assignable home.

If we provide 400 new beds, we get 400 new tramps.

People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes.

Our entire lives, we're inundated with media and messaging that tells us that to be incarcerated is to be criminal and to be criminal is to be a bad person.

The idea that squatting in some way offers a reasonable solution to the issue of homelessness is both false and cruel.

I'm a big guy: I look like a linebacker, you know? But no one cares, really, that I'm educated. I have a copy of 'Fire Next Time' by James Baldwin in my bag. I have an Ibsen play in there, too. I have to walk through this world with that duality all the time, that I live in two different worlds.

I've never seen a homeless guy with a bottle of Gatorade.

Once I saw a homeless man wearing his underwear on top of his pants. Now we say, why don't the homeless just go out and get a job? If he's wearing his underwear on top of his pants, I doubt his resume is in order, and I don't think he's going to make it too far in the interview process. In fact, I'm pretty sure that McDonald's has a no underwear over your pant policy.

I am living in this world, and if this world already has a certain prejudice of me and an idea of me, then it's really hard for me to go through it.

I might be living in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass, homeless, but I won't be silenced.

On the campaign trail, I have the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life - from residents at a battered women's shelter to mentally handicap children to retirees - and learn about their lives and struggles.

I've had tweets questioning whether I really did go to university because surely I would have lost my accent if I did; a letter suggesting, very politely, that I get correction therapy; and an email saying I should get back to my council estate and leave the serious work to the clever folk.

Asian males have not been appreciated for what they are. They have always been dissed for what they are not.