Philadelphia famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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The very first words that we, the American nation, spoke were right here in Philadelphia. You know those words: "We the people." It wasn't, "We the conglomerates." It wasn't, "We the corporations." It was, "We the people.
-- Al Gore -
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a house of artistic and intellectual prostitution
-- Albert C. Barnes -
At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.
-- Allen Johnson -
At 13, I realized that I could fix anything electronic. It was amazing, I could just do it. I started a business repairing radios. It grew to be one of the largest in Philadelphia.
-- Amar Bose -
Philadelphia reflected the national turmoil over race and the Vietnam War, often exploding on my watch.
-- Andrea Mitchell -
Socially, Philadelphia was still a fairly provincial city, its business community governed by the mores of the Main Line. Politically, it was a cauldron of ethnic rivalries, dominated by competing Irish and Italian constituencies.
-- Andrea Mitchell -
The Freedom Bell in Berlin is, like the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, a symbol which reminds us that freedom does not come about of itself. It must be struggled for and then defended anew every day of our lives.
-- Angela Merkel -
I've never known a Philadelphian who wasn't a downright 'character'; possibly a defense mechanism resulting from the dullness of their native habitat.
-- Anita Loos -
My home was in a pleasant place outside of Philadelphia. But I really lived, truly lived, somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books.
-- Anna Quindlen -
Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."
-- Benjamin Franklin -
Smokey Wilson was like my Gandhi. If I had run into somebody else in prison, with a different set of values, the world might have never known one of the greatest boxing talents ever to come out of Philadelphia.
-- Bernard Hopkins -
The only thing I can cheer for in Philadelphia is the national anthem.
-- Bill Belichick -
I have quite a few good friends in Philadelphia who were police officers.
-- Bobby Seale -
I am the father of twin sons that were born in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1983. They were 13 weeks premature. Gerry weighed 1 pound 14 ounces, and Zachary 1 pound 11 ounces. They were the first male twins to ever survive at Pennsylvania Hospital.
-- Buzz Bissinger -
I don't have many friends in Philadelphia. I sort of have one. I have the dog and someone else.
-- Buzz Bissinger -
I see far stronger and more charismatic personalities strolling around Philadelphia's neighborhoods than are being featured in most of today's bland daytime soaps.
-- Camille Paglia -
In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll's Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.
-- Charlie Chaplin -
I think Philadelphia has been underrated over the years as a musical region.
-- Daryl Hall -
I wanted to show the world, and myself too, what I can do. I came up in the world of Philadelphia soul, but I'm fluent in a lot of languages musically and I like working with different people from different generations.
-- Daryl Hall -
I grew up in a very racially integrated place called Pottstown. It was an agricultural / industrial town which has since become a suburb of Philadelphia. I grew up basically in a black neighborhood.
-- Daryl Hall -
Yes, [Philadelphia is] horrible, but in a very interesting way. There were places there that had been allowed to decay, where there was so much fear and crime that just for a moment there was an opening to another world. It was fear, but it was so strong, and so magical, like a magnet, that your imagination was always sparking in PhiladelphiaI just have to think of Philadelphia now, and I get ideas, I hear the wind, and I'm off into the darkness somewhere.
-- David -
John Huston was a superb master. He knew how to make good films. I did three things with him. One is called Independence. It plays in Philadelphia, for free. It's been playing there for 25 years
-- Eli Wallach -
When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia--which was inappropriate, certainly that . . . to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people,
-- Eric Holder -
New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been.
-- Ethel Waters -
It is true that the American colonials have "free elections," in which they have the absolute right to vote for one of two opposing candidates, both of whom have been handpicked and financed by the Rockefeller syndicate. This touching evidence of "democracy" serves to convince most Americana that we are indeed a free people. We even have a cracked Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to prove it.
-- Eustace Mullins -
I never walked through the streets of any city with as much satisfaction as those of Philadelphia. The neatness and cleanliness of all animate and inanimate things, houses, pavements, and citizens, is not to be surpassed.
-- Frances Wright -
The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe.
-- Frank Rizzo -
The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 world champions of baseball.
-- Harry Kalas -
The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa.
-- Henry Louis Gates -
My father's family came from Virginia and Philadelphia. He wasn't a brother who talked a lot. He was a workingman, a quiet, blue-collar dude.
-- Ice T -
Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.
-- James Carville -
But I'm interested in the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. I hear there are some of the worst Matisses there. I like seeing bad art by good artists. It's inspiring. I'm able to identify with them. It makes them real.
-- Jemima Kirke -
That bumper sticker everyone has down in Philadelphia, the one that says, 'Only the Lord saves more than Bernie Parent,' really isn't true. God couldn't have made all the saves that Parent made against us.
-- Jerry Korab -
Nothing has gotten me out of Philadelphia. I moved 20 minutes away from Philly. That's about it.
-- Jill Scott -
Comcast began their tradition of volunteer service in 1997 when Comcast employees and their families participated in the Philadelphia Cares Day.
-- Jim Gerlach -
It's well known that I interviewed with Philadelphia last winter, and I'd like to manage again,
-- Jim Leyland -
People in Philadelphia are a world apart from New York. They're very different from people in the New York scene. The New York scene wants your visibility and wants your money.
-- John Gutfreund -
The Constitution was written by 55 educated and highly intelligent men in Philadelphia in 1787, but it was written so that it could be understood by people of limited education and modest intelligence.
-- John Jay Hooker -
The first play I did was 'Philadelphia Here I Come.' Can you imagine that? I am 37 years old I am doing my second professional play and I am on stage with John Malkovich. Joan Allen, Laurie Metcalf and Gary Sinise. One huge name after another. I was terrified and petrified, could hardly get a word out of my mouth.
-- John Mahoney -
In the year 1857, passing through Washington on our return from the annual visit to Philadelphia, I had the distinguished honor of visiting a President for the first time.
-- John Sergeant Wise -
In those days, slavery was not looked upon, even in Quaker Philadelphia, with the shudder and abhorrence one feels towards it now.
-- John Sergeant Wise -
My mother was a Northern woman, daughter of Hon. John Sergeant, a distinguished lawyer, and for many years representative in Congress from Philadelphia.
-- John Sergeant Wise -
Brooklyn was like Philadelphia made better by its proximity to Manhattan.
-- Jonathan Franzen -
If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.
-- Jonathan Kozol -
Some of the best cooks that I've cooked with, whether it's in New York or Chicago or even here in Philadelphia, are actually Ecuadorians. And there's something about their palates that really just inspires me, and has a really deep sense of flavor.
-- Jose Garces -
I started playing professional basketball in 1971, and I played professionally for five seasons before going to Philadelphia.
-- Julius Erving -
I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.
-- Kate DiCamillo -
My dad was an architect, and he wasn't a rich guy, but in our little world in Philadelphia, he was famous. He loved to see his picture in the paper. I wanted to be more famous than him.
-- Kevin Bacon -
I love the show 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia;' that's probably a guilty pleasure! I laugh so hard.
-- Linden Ashby -
I love the dignity in the name Philadelphia, but at heart, we're Philly.
-- Lisa Scottoline -
You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.
-- Lisa Scottoline -
I love everything about Philadelphia, and its food is like the city itself: real-deal, hearty, and without pretension. Weve always had an underdog vibe as a city, but that just makes us try harder, and I love our scrappiness and scruffiness.
-- Lisa Scottoline -
In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?
-- Mark Twain -
I think everybody from Philadelphia been shot at before.
-- Meek Mill -
Whether it's on the streets of Philadelphia or New York or Chicago or Atlanta or in a classroom in Newtown, Connecticut, people want to be safe.
-- Michael Nutter -
Politics in Philadelphia is a contact sport.
-- Michael Nutter -
I think I would love a shot at remaking 'The Philadelphia Story,' as daunting as it is. I still think it's fantastic. I love the '30s comedies because they're allowed to be both comic and elegant, and the women are so complicated in them.
-- Michael Patrick King -
If you're associated with the Philadelphia media or town, you look for negatives. I don't know if there's something about their upbringing or they have too many hoagies, or too much cream cheese.
-- Mike Schmidt -
Philadelphia is the only city, where you can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it the next day.
-- Mike Schmidt -
Like most struggling writers trying to get their scripts commissioned, I had to do something odd to pay the rent. So, aged 21, I started up my own small cheesecake company in Philadelphia.
-- Nancy Meyers -
To play today in London, next week in Madrid and the week after that in Warsaw is a bit better than playing Newark and Baltimore and Philadelphia. I've been doing that for 20 years.
-- Norman Granz -
Actually, Magic and the Lakers beat Philadelphia for Magic's first NBA Championship.
-- Oscar Robertson -
I think we need to start with Philadelphia and make sure that we actually get some election reform in Philadelphia. Actually, a recent election was thrown out by a federal judge because of corruption with the voting process in Philadelphia.
-- Patrick McHenry -
Teller and I worked Renaissance Festivals and street performing - actually more real, no kidding around, Philadelphia street performing than we did Renaissance Festivals.
-- Penn Jillette -
The Philadelphia Feds manufacturers report for September revealed that despite a sharp slowdown, its prices paid index surged 257 points.
-- Peter Schiff -
You'll regret the day you ever messed with Philadelphia Collins and sons
-- Phil Collins -
I grew up in somewhat of a war zone in West Philadelphia in 1985, '86. It wasn't as extreme as someone coming in the classroom and just unloading on a class, but I knew to take the scenic route to go to the grocery store to avoid certain elements.
-- Questlove -
I feel like it's a dangerous and dark world if 'Sunny' becomes mainstream comedy. If you were to turn on CBS at 8 o'clock on Thursday and see an episode of 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia,' I don't know if I want to live in that world.
-- Rob McElhenney -
Let every man or woman here remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and with what you are. He who would be great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia.
-- Russell Conwell -
At my growing years of 18 to 21 years old in the Minor Leagues, I dreamed of being a Philadelphia Phillie.
-- Ryne Sandberg -
I have a really, really hard time sitting down and watching a TV show, except I'm apparently willing to watch the same episode of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,' like, seven times.
-- Shane Carruth -
Rooting is following, and I don't do that, but I'd like to see the Phillies win because I love Philadelphia.
-- Steve Carlton -
Pennsylvania is one of the worst states in country when it comes to the condition of its infrastructure, and Philadelphia isn't any better off than Pittsburgh. Nine million people a day travel over 900 bridges classified as structurally deficient, some of them on a heavily traveled section of I-95.
-- Steve Kroft -
We are extremely proud to represent all of Radio One's stations within the Katz Radio Group. For the past five years we have worked diligently alongside Radio One to build their business in the markets we have historically represented including Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia , Raleigh and Columbus. At a time of significant growth in the African American consumer market the addition of the remaining Radio One stations expands our ability to deliver strategic marketing solutions to our agency and advertiser customers.
-- Steve Shaw -
In Philadelphia, there's no delineation, they address me as Rocky, for real. They'll say things like: "Rocky, do you like this coat?" Or: "Rock, say hi to my sister." Or: "Yo Rock, I know a great restaurant." There's no Sylvester. Even the Mayor goes: "It's good to have Rocky here today."
-- Sylvester Stallone -
I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]
-- Thurgood Marshall -
I went to the University of Virginia and I came from, I grew up in suburban Philadelphia.
-- Tina Fey -
When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or '31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their owners, since they had lost their jobs and couldn't keep up the payments.
-- Tom Glazer -
I should care about the education a child in Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh, or Erie, or Scranton received because if they didn't get a good education my life is diminished and all of our lives are enhanced if they get that good education. It is a shared enterprise and we need to recognize that.
-- Tom Wolf -
It's been rough for me trying to find my position in the struggle and where my voice is needed and helpful. You know, I grew up in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has a really rough police-brutality history. I grew up in a neighborhood where it was very clear that the police were "them" and we were "us".
-- Will Smith -
I was in Philadelphia - a very angry town, Philadelphia. I've never seen a town like this. It's supposed to be the City of Brotherly Love - like when my brother was 12 and I was nine, and he would lean on my shoulder and dangle spit in my face.
-- Andy Kindler -
It's amazing to be a Puerto Rican fighter, we have a great history of fighters. I say this all the time, 'I'm Puerto Rican, raised in Philadelphia so I got the best of both worlds. I got the Puerto Rican power and the Philly toughness. It comes a long way.
-- Danny Garcia -
If you were back in the Cretaceous Period - the last of the time of the dinosaurs - and you were driving from New York to Philadelphia on the New Jersey Turnpike, you would be driving across water.
-- Kenneth Lacovara -
I went to a mosque in Philadelphia with [my wife] in December 24, 1999. And we we went to this mosque in Philly, and I just had such a strong reaction to the prayer. And I was really emotionally - I felt really grounded at that time. And so to be in this prayer and the imam is doing the prayer in Arabic and I don't understand a word of Arabic but I just remember these tears just coming down my face and it just really connecting to my spirit in a way that felt like I needed to pay attention to that.
-- Mahershala Ali -
...I discovered that I could take a risk and survive. I could march in Philadelphia. I could go out in the street and be gay evenin a dress or a skirt without getting shot. Each victory gave me courage for the next one.
-- Martha Shelley -
I remember watching Ring of Honor as a fan, going to shows in Philadelphia and New York, and I loved the guys. I thought these are some of the best wrestlers in the world, if not THE best.
-- Adam Cole -
Philadelphia is a depressing intellectual slum
-- Albert C. Barnes -
I'd rather we were rebuilding Philadelphia, as opposed to Kabul...There are American cities with serious infrastructure problems and we're not addressing them.
-- Mick Cornett -
On October 19, 1949, I got a telephone call from the Philadelphia (A's) front office informing me I had been traded to the White Sox for Joe Tipton. I was surprised and hurt.
-- Nellie Fox -
On coaching the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers: Nobody likes us. Nobody outside Philadelphia, that is. In fact, the nicest thing people say about us is that we are a bunch of muggers.
-- Fred Shero
