San Francisco Quotes

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

As many of you know, I came from San Francisco. We don't have a lot of farms there. Well, we do have one - it's a mushroom farm, so you know what that means.

As to whether Marcos is gay: Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.

San Francisco lags behind other communities in providing a vital, vibrant and ecologically sustainable urban canopy, as well as open space in the city.

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?

The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I'm here.

I have long argued that we need to reopen Alcatraz to house government criminals, and let tourists on excursion boats in San Francisco Bay pay to chum the water with meat with an expired sell-by date that would otherwise have to be discarded.

Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.

I think maybe L.A. or San Francisco could be rushed, but Sacramento is just laid back!

I used to travel in tennis shoes; I am just not allowed to anymore. I'm an old hippie from San Francisco.

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

San Francisco has only one drawback—‘tis hard to leave.

I will sing in San Francisco if I have to sing in the streets, for I know that the streets of San Francisco are free.

Anyone who doesn't have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.

During the 1960s, one neighborhood in San Francisco had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with incomes under four thousand dollars a year, the least educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate, and the highest proportion of substandard housing ... That neighborhood was called Chinatown. Yet, in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.

San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.

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.

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.

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.

I remember when I couldn't afford to eat like this. It was ramen noodles and the San Francisco Treat [Rice-A-Roni]. Dessert? Get you a honey bun and put a slice of cheese on it. Put it in the microwave for 45 seconds and you had the gift of a lifetime.

The City that knows how.

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.

Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible.

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.

Of all cities in the United States I have seen, San Francisco is the most beautiful.

There is more grace per square foot in San Francisco than any place on earth.

I always see about six scuffles a night when I come to San Francisco. That's one of the town's charms.

I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

I love New York, Chicago, London, St. Bart's and Italy but one of my fave cities in the whole world is San Francisco. Why? Those are all places that I love to go to cause it feels good to me personally when I'm there.

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."

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

But I would rather be with you, somewhere in San Francisco on a back porch in July, just looking up to Heaven, at this crescent in the sky

It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world

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.'

Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.

Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?

If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lawful residents of San Francisco are being stripped of their freedom because of an illegal measure that defies common sense... I believe that we will prevail.

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

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.

I’m just mad for San Francisco. It is like London and Paris stacked on top of each other.

New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.)

There are a thousand viewpoints in the viewtiful city.

San Franciscans are very proud of their city, and they should be. It’s the most beautiful place in the world.

Google has already tested robot cars in San Francisco. If they can navigate San Francisco, they can probably manage just about anywhere.