City Quotes

I like going to New York. I like the galleries and the theatre and the restaurants and bars and music. I think that city is more alive than Los Angeles.

Sara Gilbert

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.

Henry Miller

Los Angeles is a city looking for a ritual to join its fragments, and The Doors are looking for such a ritual also. A kind of electric wedding. We hide ourselves in the music to reveal ourselves.

Jim Morrison

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it.

Robert Burton

I can tell you that tonight in Des Moines, Iowa, my home town, people all across the city will be putting a hand to their ears and saying "What is that sound?", and it will be the sound of Mr De Vito, my High School Careers Officer, spinning in his grave.

William Cullen Bryant

I, who loved and knew you, In the city that slew you, Still hunger on, and thirst, and climb, proud-hearted and alone: Serpent-fears enfold me, Syren-visions hold me, And, like a wave, I gather strength, and gathering strength, I moan; Yea, the pale moon beckons, Still I follow, aching, And gather strength, only to make a louder moan, in breaking!

Robert Williams Buchanan

In the fledgling days of the town, the notorious Block 16 was set aside for card games and prostitution. Sin and commerce have marched hand-in-hand ever since, but this alliance made Las Vegas no more atypical than any other American city of the time. The difference is that Las Vegas extolled with pride what other places sought to hide. To the commonplace culture of heavily populated cities and industrial towns that made up the urban fabric of the country, Las Vegas alone stood as the behavioral "Other," a land where the "victimless" crimes of sex, drink, and gambling were not only condoned, but celebrated.

MARK GOTTDIENER

Las Vegas history, the real Las Vegas history, makes fops and fools of even the most sincere explorers. The city's story is riddled with blind alleys, dead ends, crazy twists, and outright fabrication.

JOHN L. SMITH

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Gore Vidal

Among the noblest in the land - Though man may count himself the least - That man I honor and revere, Who without favor, without fear, In the great city dares to stand, The friend of every friendless beast.

Henry W. Longfellow

City employees will be hired and promoted because of their abilities - without outside interference

Jane Byrne

How absurd it must seem for an immortal soul to be destined for Heaven or Hell, and yet be sitting in a kitchen, as a maid, or to see oneself objectified as a mechanic! how falsely the usual sunrise waked us, the clock dial, the city street the job! How wrongfully people find themselves in these systems our time isn't there, our space isn't there, our space isn't even here... the whole social story of waking, and certainly the day of the mechanic, is false.

Ernst Simon Bloch

The mere fact of an undiscovered restaurant, in a city where gourmands travel in ravening packs, creates an excitement unrelated to the quality of the cuisine.

Lawrence Van Gelder

“The mere fact of an undiscovered restaurant, in a city where gourmands travel in ravening packs, creates an excitement unrelated to the quality of the cuisine.”

Lawrence Van Gelder