San Francisco famous quotes
06-14-2025
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It's funny, but when there are dominant teams, there are a number of people who rail about the fact that they're always seeing the Dallas Cowboys or the San Francisco 49ers or the Green Bay either in the playoffs or in the Super Bowl.
-- Al Michaels -
These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.
-- Alan Watts -
San Francisco is the place where most people were last seen
-- Ambrose Bierce -
I used to travel in tennis shoes; I am just not allowed to anymore. I'm an old hippie from San Francisco.
-- Amy Irving -
San Francisco is one of my favourite cities in the world...I would probably rank it at the top or near the top. It's small but photogenic and has layers...You never have problems finding great angles that people have never done.
-- Ang Lee -
I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.
-- Anne Lamott -
Anyone who doesn't have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
I did this movie with Spike Lee called 'Sucker Free City,' and that would have to be my favorite role by far. It was just so much fun to work with Spike and shoot in San Francisco.
-- Anthony Mackie -
It is hardly fair to blame America for the state of San Francisco, for its population is cosmopolitan and its seaport attracts the floating vice of the Pacific; but be the cause what it may, there is much room for spiritual betterment.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle -
There may not be a Heaven, but there is a San Francisco.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant -
I don't worry about anything in the Internet age. I have been online since I was aware of it: 1985 in San Francisco. It has changed everything in my life. I would not want to even be alive in an era that did not have it because it is essential to our evolution as a species.
-- Augusten Burroughs -
Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.
-- Bobby McFerrin -
From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians hearts are.
-- Boz Scaggs -
In June 2010, I moved out of my apartment and I have been mostly homeless ever since, off and on. I just live in Airbnb apartments and I check in every week in different homes in San Francisco.
-- Brian Chesky -
Maximum Rocknroll didn't have a map section. How was I supposed to know that Berkeley was not a neighborhood of San Francisco?
-- Bucky Sinister -
Left the ranch in 1883, went to California, going through the States and territories, reached Ogden the latter part of 1883, and San Francisco in 1884.
-- Calamity Jane -
Of agitating good roads there is no end, and perhaps this is as it should be, but I think you'll agree that it is high time to agitate less and build more. [Here is] a plan whereby the automobile industry of America can build a magnificent "Appian Way" from New York to San Francisco, having it completed by May 1, 1915 and present it to the people of the United States.
-- Carl G. Fisher -
San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities
-- Cecil Beaton -
Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. Cesar Chavez Address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Nov. 9, 1984
-- Cesar Chavez -
If you're brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn't, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless.
-- China Mieville -
San Francisco has just blown us all away. I also understand Angels in America didn't do well there.
-- Chita Rivera -
When I was a prosecutor in San Francisco I would get advice on trying cases from public defenders and defense attorneys.
-- Christine Pelosi -
One of my favorite places in San-Francisco is Aunt Charlies drag show. You pay $3 and see shows that literally give you goose bumps and bring you to tears. As a performer, you know they're giving 100% and you can't help but cry.
-- Christopher Owens -
I'm working class, my family was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled.
-- Cindy Sheehan -
Many people in San Francisco know me, and they know my persistence.
-- Cindy Sheehan -
In all my travels I have never seen the hospitality of San Francisco equalled anywhere in the world.
-- Conrad Hilton -
I got lucky. I won the San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1977 while I was still at San Francisco State.
-- Dana Carvey -
Thank you ... San Francisco. All right, you're ruining the show. Thank you ... for clapping for what my parents are ashamed of.
-- Daniel Tosh -
In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play
-- Danny Glover -
Most things in San Francisco can be bought or taken.
-- Dashiell Hammett -
Here I am: a Russian-speaking Jew living in Canada, and you, an Indian ex-patriot living in San Francisco. All of a sudden we commune in this moment about a much older Russian political dissident.That's the human part of being human: feeling those moments.
-- David Bezmozgis -
It's a chicken-and-egg thing. You could send cards to everyone in San Francisco, but if the merchants don't have the terminals, what's the point? What you need is a cooperative effort with merchants in a metropolitan area to create a tipping point where you can justify advertising and merchants are willing to attempt this new payment system.
-- David Robertson -
It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.
-- David Sedaris -
You can go one block to the next in San Francisco and get a completely different opinion of what the issue is.
-- Don Johnson -
San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus of the world - one of the really urbane communities in the United States - one of the truly cosmopolitan places and for many, many years, it always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world
-- Duke Ellington -
San Francisco is really fun and liberal, and it's my kind of politics. It's like being Jewish in front of Jewish people.
-- Elayne Boosler -
Chef Matt Accarrino has the best pasta in San Francisco, and Shelley Lindgren is one of my favorite sommeliers. Their attention to detail in the service, food, and amazing wines will blow anyone away.
-- Elizabeth Falkner -
Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word "Frisco", which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of High Misdemeanour, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars.
-- Emperor Norton -
Well, it seems that one day Dylan was drivin' up to San Francisco from New Orleans or somewhere, when our record [House of the Rising Sun] came over his radio. When it was announced he said to Joan Baez -- who was with him at the time -- 'This'll be the first time I've heard this version', although it was number one in the States. So he listened to it, stopped the car, ran round the car five times, banged his head on the bumper and began leapin' about shouting 'It's great! It's great!'
-- Eric Burdon -
I always see about six scuffles a night when I come to San Francisco. That's one of the town's charms.
-- Errol Flynn -
I'm a huge fan of the Bay Area so I always love coming to San Francisco.
-- Ezra Koenig -
God took the beauty of the Bay of Naples, the Valley of the Nile, the Swiss Alps, the Hudson River Valley, rolled them into one and made San Francisco Bay.
-- Fiorello H. La Guardia -
To a traveler paying his first visit, [San Francisco] has the interest of a new planet. It ignores the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world.
-- Fitz Hugh Ludlow -
Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities'- New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco.
-- Frank Norris -
My sister and I were born in San Francisco. When our parents died, we came down here to live with relatives.
-- Freddy Fender -
I messed around in high school, but I pretty much put it away until I did a television show in San Francisco.
-- Gary Cole -
I don't know of any other city where you can walk through so many culturally diverse neighborhoods, and you're never out of sight of the wild hills. Nature is very close here.
-- Gary Snyder -
As Mayor, I will lead city government, businesses, and community groups to support innovative projects that will make San Francisco streets and public places vibrant and healthy
-- Gavin Newsom -
As Mayor, I will use my experience to make San Francisco a place where small businesses can thrive
-- Gavin Newsom -
San Francisco businesses face many challenges, including high rents, regulatory burdens, and the rising cost of workers compensation insurance and employee health plans
-- Gavin Newsom -
During the 1990s, San Francisco lived through one of the most intense economic booms of its history
-- Gavin Newsom -
San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.
-- Gavin Newsom -
San Francisco lags behind other communities in providing a vital, vibrant and ecologically sustainable urban canopy, as well as open space in the city.
-- Gavin Newsom -
We recognize that the arts are an essential part of San Francisco's cultural vitality.
-- Gavin Newsom -
Cultural tourism surveys consistently rate San Francisco's art industry as a core reason for visiting
-- Gavin Newsom -
San Francisco can no longer afford to be a city divided between downtown and neighborhoods, with a downtown that becomes a ghost town when workers go home for the evening
-- Gavin Newsom -
Back in the 60s, San Francisco artists lived in communes.
-- Gedde Watanabe -
I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.
-- Gedde Watanabe -
San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city. I don't mean the people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy. When they boo you, you know they mean you. Music, that's what it is to me. One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo.
-- George Halas -
Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty. It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other, incites one to dream.
-- Georges Pompidou -
I was appalled that the San Francisco ethic didn't mushroom and envelope the whole world into this loving community of acid freaks. I was very naive.
-- Grace Slick -
The world has experienced a revival of an old faith in the everlasting moral force of justice. At no time in history has there been a more important Conference, or a more necessary meeting, than this one in San Francisco, which you are opening today.
-- Harry S. Truman -
San Francisco can start right now to become number one. We can set examples so that others will follow. We can start overnight. We don't have to wait for budgets to be passed, surveys to be made, political wheelings and dealings.......for it takes no money......it takes no compromising to give the people their rights......it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.
-- Harvey Milk -
Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?
-- Herb Caen -
There are a thousand viewpoints in the viewtiful city.
-- Herb Caen -
I hope I go to Heaven, and when I do, I'm going to do what every San Franciscan does when he gets there. He looks around and says, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'
-- Herb Caen -
Old San Francisco - the one so many nostalgics yearn for - had buildings that related well to each other.
-- Herb Caen -
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
-- Herb Caen -
We (San Francisco) have football weather during baseball season, and baseball weather during football season.
-- Herb Caen -
One day if I do go to heaven...I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.
-- Herb Caen -
I have seen purer liqors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier women courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited.
-- Hinton Rowan Helper -
I grew up in Marin County north of San Francisco, and in the 1950s and '60s it was a natural paradise.
-- Huey Lewis -
I think San Francisco is the best place in the whole world for an easy life.
-- Imogen Cunningham -
Perhaps after all the most breathtaking quality about San Francisco is these unexpected glimpses that you are always getting of beautiful hill-heights and beautiful valley-depths. ... City lights, like nests of diamonds, glitter and glisten in the depths of those valleys.
-- Inez Haynes Irwin -
When the Chinese first came to San Francisco, they were actually welcomed by the mayor and they had special ceremonies for them-again this is when their colony was very small, only a few Chinese.
-- Iris Chang -
Of all American cities of whatever size the most friendly on preliminary inspection, and on further acquaintance the most likable. The happiest-hearted, the gayest, the most care-free city on this continent.
-- Irvin S. Cobb -
If you are clear where you are going and you take several steps in that direction every day, you eventually have to get there. If I head north out of Santa Barbara and take five steps a day, eventually I have to end up in San Francisco. So decide what you want, write it down, review it constantly, and each day do something that moves you toward those goals.
-- Jack Canfield -
San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.
-- Jack London -
The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.
-- James A. Michener -
California, more than any other part of the Union, is a country by itself, and San Francisco a capital.
-- James Bryce -
A lot of the people in San Francisco think of themselves as healers - not just as people delivering this base service, but giving their clients spiritual help. It's almost like being an actor, playing a different part for each trick.
-- James Franco -
if there is one place in the United States where private styles make up for public images, it is San Francisco, where all lapsed lovers of America, even loyalists like me experiencing spasms of disillusionment, should be taken for refresher courses. The tides of all-American conformity beat vainly against the San Franciscan rock.
-- Jan Morris -
it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.
-- Jane Smiley -
San Francisco hosted the first medical ***** job fair. The keynote speech was titled, 'Jobs and How to Avoid Getting One.'
-- Jay Leno -
When the San Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they did, they behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich - convinced it could shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand.
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.
-- Jeane Kirkpatrick -
I didn't really start writing music or lyrics or turning them into songs until I went to San Francisco.
-- Jello Biafra -
People in San Francisco and the East Bay have shown interest, done interviews, and have come to shows. I guess that the news travels fast out of this island that we are on.
-- Joanna Newsom -
Why can't DFW compete like San Francisco does with Oakland, like Miami does with Fort Lauderdale, and like Chicago O'Hare does with Midway?
-- John Ensign -
We're crazy about this city. Los Angeles? That's just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for the trip to San Francisco.
-- John Lennon -
We're crazy about this city. First time we came here, we walked the streets all day, all over town and nobody hassled us. People smiled, friendly-like, and we knew we could live here. We'd like to keep our place in Greenwich Village and have an apartment here, God and the Immigration Service willing. Los Angeles? That's just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for the trip to San Francisco.
-- John Lennon -
If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, if you're going to San Francisco, you're gonna meet some gentle people there.
-- John Phillips -
I never dreamed I'd like any city as well as London. San Francisco is exciting, moody, exhilarating. I even love the muted fogs.
-- Julie Christie -
I love San Francisco. It would be a perfect place for a honeymoon.
-- Kim Novak -
I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That's like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa.
-- Kurt Vonnegut -
The guys in New York don’t know the new media. San Francisco takes more risks as a culture.
-- Larry Kramer -
I certainly was surprised to be named Poet Laureate of this far-out city on the left side of the world, and I gratefully accept, for as I told the Mayor, "How could I refuse?" I'd rather be Poet Laureate of San Francisco than anywhere because this city has always been a poetic center, a frontier for free poetic life, with perhaps more poets and more poetry readers than any city in the world.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
