Art & Creativity Quote by Edward Koch

Creation gets the last word here, even when politics pretends otherwise. Edward Koch, a bare-knuckled New York mayor who governed through crime waves, fiscal panic, and the daily grind of urban conflict, frames the line like a moral fact and a historical flex: whatever grandeur nations attach to war, making things came first.

The phrasing matters. “Art” does double duty, flattering both sides of the human ledger. Killing isn’t just violence; it’s a practiced craft, systematized and refined by states, armies, and men who prefer their brutality professional. By granting it the word “art,” Koch slyly admits how seductive and organized destruction can be. Then he undercuts it with “older,” a single comparative that reorders the hierarchy. Creation isn’t merely better; it’s more foundational. The subtext is almost a rebuke to political realism: don’t tell me violence is inevitable when imagination predates it.

As a politician, Koch isn’t speaking from the perch of a poet; he’s arguing policy and civic identity through a maxim. This is the kind of sentence you deploy when budgets tighten and leaders reach for policing and punishment as default answers. It nudges the listener toward a different instinct: invest in institutions that build - schools, housing, culture, public works - because they tap something more original in us than fear and force.

It also carries a New York edge: the city survives not by winning wars, but by continually making itself.