Leadership Quote by Edward Koch

Koch’s line lands like a grin you can hear across a press scrum: part threat, part self-mythology, all New York. “I’m not the type to get ulcers. I give them” flips the expected vulnerability of public life into bragging rights. Stress doesn’t corrode him; he exports it. The joke works because it treats politics as a contact sport where the real injury is psychological, and Koch wants credit for doing the hitting.

The specific intent is dominance with a wink. Ulcers are the classic midcentury metaphor for anxious overwork, the kind of ailment that afflicts the harried bureaucrat. Koch rejects that persona and replaces it with the combative mayor who thrives on confrontation, who can outlast enemies not by being calmer but by being harder. It’s swagger, but it’s also a preemptive defense: if you accuse him of being abrasive, he’s already framed abrasiveness as strength and effectiveness.

Subtext: toughness is a performance, and Koch knows the audience. New Yorkers reward candor and a certain theatrical aggression; “giving ulcers” reads as civic guardianship through intimidation. He’s not merely insensitive to conflict, he’s productive in it. The quip also signals a refusal of victimhood in a job built to make people feel besieged - by media, unions, crime, budgets, rivals. If stress is inevitable, better to be the source than the target.

Context matters. Koch governed in an era when cities were wrestling with fiscal hangovers, rising crime, and identity politics. His brand was plainspoken, pugnacious, omnipresent. The joke isn’t just personal; it’s an argument that a mayor should be an agent of pressure - squeezing agencies, opponents, and complacency - rather than a sponge for everyone else’s demands.