Cities quotes

Cities

4.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

4.7K quotes

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Browse quotes that often appear alongside cities — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

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Cities quotes (page 34 of 237)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Cities

"Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easilyborn; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love."

Men Cities Army
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
Cities

"But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts."

Giving Cities Water
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Samuel Johnson Lexicographer, Essayist, Critic
Cities

"Those who have past much of their lives in this great city, look upon its opulence and its multitudes, its extent and variety, with cold indifference; but an inhabitant of the remoter parts of the kingdom is immediately distinguished by a kind of dissipated curiosity, a busy endeavour to divide his attention amongst a thousand objects, and a wild confusion of astonishment and alarm."

Past Cities Confusion
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Cities

"These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed."

Cities Arrows Bystanders
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Cities

"Currently, it was leading him through a neighborhood that was on the downside of whatever curve you hoped you'd bought your property on the upside of. Graffiti and garbage were everywhere here. They were everywhere in the city, if it came to that, but elsewhere the garbage was better quality, and the graffiti was close to being correctly spelled. The whole area was waiting for something to happen, like a really bad fire."

Cities Fire Curves
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Tipper Gore Activist
Cities

"We use tools such as email, not just as a way to keep in daily touch with family members who live in other cities, but also as a way to keep in touch with staff and members of the public."

Cities Tools Email
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Tom Ford Fashion Designer
Cities

"I love New York. It's given me so much as a designer. When I moved here, I wanted to tap into the glamour of the city immediately. More than anywhere else, New York offers itself up - you arrive and get a rush in a flash. It's dazzling. Everywhere you look, there is decoration, from a pair of jewel-encrusted shoes in the window in Bergdorf Goodman to the Chrysler Building. And New York is incredibly democratic. Everyone is packed into this tiny space. You are confronted with all manner of people, and I love that."

Cities New York Shoes
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Timothy Keller Pastor, Author
Cities

"Cities have more “image of God” per square inch than anywhere else, and so we must not idealize the country as somehow a more spiritual place than the city."

Cities Earth Squares
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Shane Harper Actor, Dancer
Cities

"I grew up in church and I don't think I necessarily understood what it meant to be called into the culture and the community in the city that you're in or the town that you're in and live effectively and be informed and be gracious with people."

People Thinking Cities
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Robert Kennedy Politician
Cities

"I love this city. If I'm elected, I will move the White House to San Francisco. I went to Fisherman's Wharf and they even let me into Allioto`s. It may be Baghdad by the Bay to you, but to me it's Resurrection City"

Moving Cities White
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Russell Baker Writer
Cities

"The people who say: 'You are what you eat' have always seemed addled to me. In my opinion, you are what you think, and if you don't think, you can eat all the meat in Kansas City and still be nothing but a vegetable."

Thinking Cities Vegetables
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Cities

"I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost."

America Cities Son
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Fran Lebowitz Author, Essayist
Cities

"I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person."

Cities Desire New York
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Fran Lebowitz Author, Essayist
Cities

"Nothing lasts. So it's my belief, yes, I know a lot of the things that we liked didn't last, but maybe things we don't like, they're also not going to last. There has been progress in my lifetime. There are certainly things that are better than when I was young, and there are things that are worse. New York City, it's worse. There's no question."

Cities New York Progress
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Neil Gaiman Author
Cities

"Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city."

Firsts Cities Chicago
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Lauren Oliver Author
Cities

"All of you, wherever you are: in your spiny cities, or your one-bump towns. Find it, the hard stuff, the links of metal and chink, the fragments of stone filling your stomach. And pull, and pull, and pull. I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever. Take down the walls."

Cities Wall Forever
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Italo Calvino Writer
Cities

"My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them."

People Writing Cities
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