1.
A man from Iowa or Illinois will say 'I'm from the Middle West'..a Georgian or a Mississipian may admit to being merely a Southerner...but no Texan, given the opportunity, ever said otherwise than 'I'm from Texas'.
J. Frank Dobie
2.
I am committed to working with Speaker Hastert and the other members of the Illinois congressional delegation to do all that I can to ensure that Illinois' funding needs are adequately met.
Bill Lipinski
3.
I love the Midwest. I think about it every day. I wonder if I would rather have a little farm in the Midwest, in Illinois or Wisconsin, or would I rather have like a little getaway up in the mountains of Colorado.
Joe Lando
4.
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.
Abraham Lincoln
5.
To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.
Paul Ryan
6.
When I was ten, my family moved to Downer's Grove, Illinois. When I was twelve, I found them.
Emo Philips
7.
Nitrogen fertilizer is used on all crops produced in this country, but it is a key plant nutrient to produce corn a critical crop to Illinois farmers.
John Shimkus
8.
I grew up in central Illinois midway between Chicago and St. Louis and I made an historic blunder. All my friends became Cardinals fans and grew up happy and liberal and I became a Cubs fan and grew up embittered and conservative.
George Will
9.
Five states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina - have been identified by the EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks - stacks over 500 feet - were operating in the United States: needles injecting poison into the atmosphere.
Sheldon Whitehouse
10.
What success I achieved in the theatre is due to the fact that I have always worked just as hard when there were ten people in the house as when there were thousands. Just as hard in Springfield, Illinois as on Broadway.
Bill Robinson
11.
The people that I represent in Illinois care passionately about protecting open space and safeguarding our nation's natural treasures, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Robert Dold
12.
I grew up among farmers in Illinois and so you always have to have the tools you might need in the eventuality of a flat tire or a broken window.
Nick Offerman
14.
The official language of the State of Illinois shall be known hereafter as the American language, and not the English language.
Frank Church
15.
After world war all we got was a lot of conformity, and conservatism and when I was in college at the university of Illinois the skirt lengths dropped instead of going up as they had during the roaring twenties and I knew that was a very bad sign, and it is symbolic and reflective of a very repressive time, and some of that was laid the feet of the cold war.
Hugh Hefner
16.
Illinois is a state of suspended animation and the people live in hibernation from Oct. to whenever it ever gets warmer.
John O'Hara
17.
It is unacceptable that disabled veterans in Illinois rank at the bottom of the list when it comes to disability pay. We owe our disabled veterans more than speeches, parades and monuments.
Dick Durbin
18.
I'm from Downer's Grove, Illinois. We had a blackout there the other day, but fortunately the police made him get back into his car before he got too far.
Emo Philips
19.
Tax reform and expanded trade are going to be so important to the economy of Illinois, particularly the 11th Congressional District, which is a major manufacturing and a major agricultural district.
Jerry Weller
20.
Illinois then had no legislation providing compensation for accident or disease caused by occupation.
Alice Hamilton
21.
If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore.
Carol Moseley Braun
22.
Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
George Ryan
23.
But, also, before I even go on the Medicare prescription drug debate, I always tell the folks in rural Illinois, and I represent 30 counties south of Springfield down to Indiana and Kentucky, that in this bill is the best rural package for hospitals ever passed.
John Shimkus
24.
The meetings of the legislature at Springfield then first brought together that splendid group of young men of genius whose phenomenal careers and distinguished services have given Illinois fame in the history of the nation.
John George Nicolay
25.
Many seventh graders I know in Illinois, as well as around the Nation, are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.
Melissa Bean
26.
In Memory of BPP Comrades Fred Hampton & Mark Clark, both assassinated by the US Government via the state and local government of Chicago, Illinois, December 4, 1969.
Emory Douglas
27.
Illinois corn farmers are the Nation's number two exporter of feed grains.
John Shimkus
28.
Vermont is such a small state, and the most money that's ever been spent in the history of political campaigns there is $2 million. That number is going to be surpassed many times. Vermont remains a "cheap state" for the Republican National Committee. So putting $5 or $10 million into Vermont - compared to New York or California or Illinois - that's small potatoes.
Bernie Sanders
29.
Our party is a diverse one, as is my home state of Illinois.
Dick Durbin
30.
Growing up on the border there, we were always frustrated with people's pronunciations of towns in Michigan, and people mispronouncing Illinois. There are all these Native American words that no one really knows how to pronounce.
Sufjan Stevens
31.
People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances.
Henry Louis Gates
32.
Illinois has less than a 12 percent black population and I won with 55 percent of the vote.
Carol Moseley Braun
33.
The Mississippi River carries the mud of thirty states and two provinces 2,000 miles south to the delta and deposits 500 million tons of it there every year. The business of the Mississippi, which it will accomplish in time, is methodically to transport all of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.
Charles Kuralt
34.
We in Illinois are very fortunate to have a number of historic structures that have added immeasurably to the cultural life of the state, to the tourism industry of the state which by the way is our number one industry.
James R. Thompson
35.
I didn't want to give up my Illinois driver's license and was unaware that was a crime. It is, by the way, in the state of California. Lesson learned. I technically broke a law, so technically I deserve whatever I get.
Patrick Stump
36.
The thing about Chicago is that it really isn't like any other place. The architecture and the layout of the city are the best. I'm from the Midwest, and consider myself a Midwesterner. I feel most at home there. I love California. I have great friends in California. I just have always considered Illinois to be home.
Vince Vaughn
37.
In Illinois, community, migrant, homeless and public housing health centers operate 268 primary care sites and serve close to 1 million patients every year.
Jan Schakowsky
38.
In 1966 the ACS formulated a State Model Cancer Act which was instrumental in the enactment of anti-quackery laws now enforced in 9 states...In California (it is a) felony...The use of unproven methods is also a criminal offense in Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Jane Brody
39.
I said we are going to balance an $11 billion budget deficit in a $29 billion budget, so by percentage, the largest budget deficit in America, by percentage, larger than California, larger than New York, larger than Illinois. And we're going to balance that without raising taxes on the people of the state of New Jersey.
Chris Christie
40.
I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state.
Dick Van Dyke
41.
Obama might do well to remember that his fast rise from the Illinois state Senate was due in large part to an uncanny ability to make friends and find mentors.
Ron Fournier
42.
I grew up mostly in Champaign, Illinois. My dad was at the University of East Illinois, so I was always around the music. One of my dad's buddies was the avant-garde composer John Cage, so I picked up on that weird classical and eclectic music.
Stuart Hamm
43.
If there's a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that's struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it's not my grandparent.
Barack Obama
44.
My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get.
Laurie Metcalf
45.
Illinois Senator Paul Simon, once said "The test for a Supreme Court nominee is not where he stands on any one specific issue. The test is this: Will you use your power on the court to restrict freedom or expand it?"
Dick Durbin
46.
I used to race at the YMCA in Crystal Lake, Illinois, they used to have a dirt track there, and there was also a track near Rockford, Illinois, that I would go to.
Matt Skiba
47.
Although the only way that I'm well known at Illinois State is that I am the "grammar Nazi." And so any student whose deployment of a semi-colon is not absolutely Mozart-esque knows that they're going to get a C in my class, and so my classes tend to have like four students in them. It's really a lot of fun.
David Foster Wallace
48.
To the people of Illinois let me say this. Business as usual IS OVER.
Bruce Rauner
49.
A study in Illinois in the mid-1990s found that 65 percent of businesses were hurt by the proximity of gambling
John Warren Kindt
50.
As a youngster I worked the river boats going down the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, pushing barges to Chicago, then all the way down to New Orleans.
Clint Walker