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!

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

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

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.

San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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