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Bunker, ultimately, is not malevolent as much as he's just ignorant. The world's changed just a little too much since he came back from "Dubya-Dubya Two." He's painfully slow to let go of the prejudices that he embraced as a kid, even though, somewhere deep inside, lurks a heart of gold.

In a classic confrontation, Sammy Davis Jr. once found himself at the Bunker residence.

"Now, no prejudice intended," Bunker tells the famous entertainer. "But I always check with the Bible on these here things. I think that, I mean if God had meant for us to be together he'd a put us together. But look what he done. He put you over in Africa, and put the rest of us in all the white countries."

Davis replies, "Well, he must've told 'em where we were because somebody came and got us."

But Davis later decides that Bunker, for all his failings, isn't the sort who would burn a cross on your lawn. "But if he saw one burning, he's liable to toast a marshmallow on it."

As we bid goodbye to O'Connor, here then are some of the most enduring Bunkerisms — those moments when Archie is trying to prove a point. And he does. Only it's not the one he's trying to make.

Here's Archie Bunker:

On Gun Control: His daughter tells him that guns cause 60 percent of all deaths in America. "Would it make you feel any better if they was pushed out of windows?" he asks.

On Crime: "All the airlines have to do to end sky-jacking is arm the passengers."

On Homosexuality: "I never said a guy who wears glasses is a queer. A guy who wears glasses is a four-eyes. A guy who is a fag is a queer."

On a typical day: "Yeah, it was a beauty, coming home I was held up 31 minutes in the subway. Packed in like sardines, we were. No lights, no fans, just me pressed up against a 300-pound Italian man, half of which was pure garlic."

On Affirmative Action: Archie reads off the names on the slate he's voting for: "Tore, Feldman, O'Reilly, Nelson," he says "That's an Italian, a Jew, an Irishman and a regular American. That's what I call a balanced ticket."