California State Quotes & Sayings

Latro, California: "Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!" "Take these pills and come back in three days if you're not better."
Parkington, Texas: "Terrible diarrhea ... " "Take these pills ... "
Hainesport, Louisiana: "Terrible ... " "Take ... "
Baker Bay, Florida ...
Washington, DC ...
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ...
New York, New York ...
Boston, Massachusetts ...
Chicago, Illinois: "Doctor, I know it's Sunday, but the kid's in such a terrible state - you've got to help me!" "Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye."
EVERYWHERE, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size to take a baby dead from acute infantile enteritis. — John Brunner

A federal bailout would spare California from having to make spending cuts needed to bring its budget into balance. The matter has become urgent since California voters rejected several tax-hiking ballot initiatives. Rather than taking the vote as a signal to dramatically curtail spending, the state turned to the feds. If they get a free pass, the politicians can avoid fixing any of their past mistakes or preparing California for the future. — Peter Schiff

In 2006, the state of California spent $3.5 billion on the state university system. It spent $9.9 billion on the state prison system. — Ken Robinson

According to the California Hospital Association, health care for illegal aliens is costing state taxpayers well over $1 billion a year. Eighty-four hospitals across California have already been forced to close because of unpaid bills by illegal aliens. — Ann Coulter

The state of California itself was now just like me - a free-spirited liberal with a mostly sunny disposition teetering on the edge of financial ruin. (Natalie Teeger) — Lee Goldberg

The oil dinosaurs want to win so badly in my home state because what happens here matters everywhere. The nation often follows where California goes. — Rebecca Solnit

You can look at the state of California, which is on a pathway to destruction because they expanded government too much, thinking that there would always be someone to pay for it. — Greg Abbott

California is the highest-tax state in the nation and has been for a long time. It has the highest-paid teachers in the nation, by far - $400 a month more than New Jersey - and yet California is the third lowest state on test scores for fourth and eighth grade English and math in the nation, and has been at the low level for a long, long time. — Arthur Laffer

California is the most reactionary state in America. Fascist sentiments are very strong here. — Ilya Ilf

I did a series of classes in psychology (at the institute), .. The students that came to that class had children. And over a period of a few years, they decided they wanted a nursery school, a play group (to watch over their children while they were studying). So in one of the garages that was near where we were having the classes, we established a play group area and the students volunteered to supervise. That eventually led to building a state-licensed nursery school, which was approved by the California department of social welfare. — Dorothy Nolte

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. — James Q. Wilson

Being raised a Jew in southern California in the 1950s and 1960s, my religious training emphasized learning the Hebrew language and Jewish festivals, history, and culture. We also remembered the Holocaust and supported the newly formed Jewish state of Israel. — Rick Strassman

I found an online knife store. I'd rather go and pick one up so that I had it today, but then I noticed they had a category called. California Legal. Apparently, I lived in a state that had really solid knife control-but still allowed you to own a machine gun. Logical. — Marshall Thornton

The fact that California was the most cosmopolitan state in the union, as a result of the gold rush, simply made white voters more susceptible to racist and xenophobic arguments. — H.W. Brands

Virtually throughout its history, and certainly in the 20th century, California has been known as the place to go for dynamism and growth. It did not become the richest, most populous, and most productive state solely because of its weather and natural resources. So it takes a lot to turn California around from growth to contraction, from people moving into the state to a net exodus from the state, from business moving into California to businesses leaving California. It takes some doing. And the Left has done it. — Dennis Prager

Yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he would run for governor of California. The announcement was good news for Florida residents who now live in the second flakiest state in the country. — Conan O'Brien

All this cut-price transcendentalism does not prevent California from being a startlingly physical state. This becomes most obvious where Los Angeles saunters down to the sea. The region is called Venice. — Quentin Crisp

Our original idea was to help three or four hundred candidates in the first election run for the Ohio State legislature and the California legislature around the country. — Pete Du Pont

SHOULD CIRCUMSTANCE PREVENT a man from carrying his cigarettes and cell phone in his pants pocket, the rectum provides a workable alternative. So workable that well over a thousand pounds of tobacco and hundreds of cell phones are rectally smuggled into California state prisons each year. The contraband allows incarcerated gang members and narcotics dealers to make business calls from behind bars (and to enjoy a smoke while doing so). — Mary Roach

I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that the mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it
inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best since fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness. — Philip K. Dick

I travelled to California when I was 18 and went to Los Angeles State College. — Robert Vaughn

Then you wake up in Barstow California. Another dissociative fugue. It's like time traveling. It's late November now. What ever happened at teresa is a mystery to you. In Godforsaken Barstow, where the golden state shits itself into the desert, people are eatting each other. Has it always been this way? — Lost Zombies

In California, there was Atascadero State Hospital, constructed in 1954 at the cost to taxpayers of over $10 million (almost $110 million in today's money). Atascadero was a maximum-security psychiatric prison on the central coast where mentally disordered male lawbreakers [including homosexuals] from all over California were incarcerated. Inmates were treated at Atascadero by a variety of methods, including electroconvulsive therapy; lobotomy; sterilization, and hormone injections. Anectine was used often for 'behavior modification.' It was a muscle relaxant, which gave the person to whom it was administered the sensation of choking or drowning, while he received the message from the doctor that if he didn't change his behavior he would die (10). — Lillian Faderman

One way to bring down crime in the state of California and every state in the union is to have an enforceable border. That means let's build that border fence. When people want to come into this country, let's ask them to knock on the front door. — Duncan Hunter

In California, of all places, entertainment is the key to a vibrant economy. If we do not develop young adults capable of entering that world, the financial base of this state is sure to suffer and impact all of us. — David Cassidy

I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good. — Kathryn Stockett

Fifty years ago, great schools like the University of California and the City University of New York - as well as many state colleges - were tuition free. Today college is unaffordable for many working class families. For the sake of our economy and millions of Americans, we must make higher education more affordable. — Bernie Sanders

In California, of course, they never break up couples at dinner for fear of what might happen if someone's husband were seated next to someone else's very young girlfriend. But dinners with couples seated next to one another are always deadly dull, which is why there are almost no good dinner parties in the entire state of California. — Nora Ephron

I think we've got a number of states coming up that we're going to do extremely well and possibly winning, including California and New York state.So I think we do have a path to victory. — Bernie Sanders

In California, I guess you belong to the state; you don't even belong to your parents. It's an old Spanish law. It doesn't require your parents to swear out a complaint; anybody can. — Bo Derek

Suicide attempts at the Empire State Building are rare, but the same unfortunately cannot be said about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the most popular such site in the United States. (The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China is widely regarded as the world's most popular suicide bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge is number two.) We don't know, officially, how many people have taken their lives there because when the number hit 997, authorities stopped counting to avoid giving anyone the incentive of being jumper number 1,000. Whatever the number is, it could have been much higher. In 1994, California Highway Patrol Sergeant Kevin Briggs was assigned to patrol the bridge. Since then, he's managed to talk an estimated 200 people out of jumping. — Dan Lewis

The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity. — Ronald Reagan

In Spain, hilly terrain and antiquated planting and harvest practices keep farmers from retrieving more than about 100 pounds [of almonds] per acre. Growers in the Central Valley, by contrast can expect up to 3000 pounds an acre. But for all their sophisticated strategies to increase yield and profitability, almond growers still have one major problem - pollination. Unless a bird or insect brings the pollen from flower to flower, even the most state-of-the-art orchard won't grow enough nuts. An almond grower who depends on wind and a few volunteer pollinators in this desert of cultivation can expect only 40 pounds of almonds per acre. If he imports honey bees, the average yield is 2,400 pounds per acre, as much as 3,000 in more densely planted orchards. To build an almond, it takes a bee. — Hannah Nordhaus

For 25 years, it has been my privilege to represent the city of San Francisco and the great state of California; to work to strengthen our vibrant middle class; to secure opportunity and equality. — Nancy Pelosi

You know, I think, people of all stripes in California, Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, frankly, as I have traveled the state, the number one issue is jobs. And they are looking for which candidate can get the economy back on track. — Meg Whitman

But if you go over the line, you don't want to get stuck in a Nevada State court room. Honestly, because Nevada has been doing a good job of putting California criminals in jail. I mean, we couldn't put OJ in jail, but they did. We couldn't put Paris Hilton in jail, but they did. — James Belushi

California has set up regional collection offices around the world, staffed by California employees, specifically for out of state California businesses to collect the money and bring it back to California. — Craig Benson

In California, we are a sixty percent Hispanic state, we elected an Austrian governor. Even old Nazis are going That's weird. — Robin Williams

One day I was meditating on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Southern California and I was absorbed in a state of high meditation. As I came out of the meditation and became aware of the sense world the world around me I knew that I had a new name. And the name, of course, was Rama. — Frederick Lenz

Governor Gray Davis has asked the California state Supreme Court to delay the October recall vote because he says that's not enough time to put on a fair election. Hey, let me tell you something. If we didn't need a fair election to pick the president of the United States, we don't need a fair election to pick the governor of California. — Jay Leno

Resting on its back in the ocean, the otter drifts along tossed by currents so tumultuous that it disappears beneath the waves for minutes at a time before bobbing back to the surface, one tiny arm behind its neck, looking for all the world as though it should be resting a martini on its chest. This is the California waiting for us: this state, and this state of mind. — Monica Ganas

Imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just one percent. That would be like turning the State of California off for almost two months. — Rupert Murdoch

There's been a growing effort to kick soda out of the schools. And governors as different as Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and Mike Huckabee in Arkansas have worked hard to get soda and junk food out of their state schools, which is good. — Eric Schlosser

If one is enlightened, one does not perceive life with North, South, East and West. There is no California, there is no New York. In a higher bonding state of attention, everything is fluid light. — Frederick Lenz

Most analysts would agree that if all the undocumented immigrants in California were deported in one day, our state would experience a severe economic downturn. This does not even consider the many cultural and spiritual gifts these immigrants bring to our state and nation. — Roger Mahony

The rules that have been imposed, the rules that are already on the books haven't been effective. If you look at the places where the strictest gun control measures, whether it be California, Los Angeles, Barack Obama's home state in Chicago, they're a disaster, and they have the greatest rules in the world. — Sean Hannity

Beneath the red crosses was another insignia: CHP. California Highway Patrol. They were State Troopers. — Cory Doctorow

There's no other state, none, that's as connected to their basketball program as this one. Because those other states have other programs. Michigan has Michigan State, California has UCLA, North Carolina has Duke. It's Kentucky throughout this whole state, and that's what makes us unique. — John Calipari

Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced
there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail. — Sinclair Lewis

California is an unbelievable state. One day I might be in a spiritual place like Joshua Tree, then before I know it, I'm eating groovy sushi in a mini-mall. I'm a Cali girl through and through. — Drew Barrymore

What I'd like to see is a private [healthcare] system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I'm negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid.Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians. — Donald Trump

HERB CAEN WAS born in Sacramento, California, a town that combined all the glamour of a farm fair with the dazzle of a state franchise board hearing. — David Talbot

Back in the '70s when my friends in California were at Berkeley, in-state tuition was around $700 a year. — Gail Collins

The Golden State has lost its luster. We've got to change our tax system and how we fund government. We're going to have to make it easier to create jobs in California, incentivize manufacturing, really put more in the way of investment in our public school system and our institutions of higher learning if we're going to stay the Golden State. — Antonio Villaraigosa

We can decide that the presence of cancer-causing substances in our air, water, and food is too expensive. A 2009 study, for example, has found that coal miners in Appalachia costs the region five times more in premature deaths, including from cancer, than it provides to the region in jobs, taxes, and economic benefits. In California, the production and use of hazardous chemicals cost the state $2.6 billion in 2004 alone in lost wages and health-care expenses to treat workers and children with pollution-linked diseases. — Sandra Steingraber

Some of the folks we see are in for defending themselves against their abusers, or drug charges that, because of the California state prison system, they have mandatory sentencing and life in prison for three counts of simple drug possession, or whatever. I find it not only helpful but, I think, necessary in maintaining my grounding and my perspective. Because music is such an unrealistic job to have. It's a really lucky job to have, but it's also very unrealistic. — Thao Nguyen

California, the department store state. — Raymond Chandler

People say California is the leading state on these type of issues. I've called my sister today and I said - I have a 3-year-old nephew - "Do you spank?"And she says, "If it's necessary I will. But that's my decision. I'm the mother. Not you." — Sean Hannity

You know, we - if, for example, Jerry Brown can withstand, you know, what will probably end up being $200 million of spending by his opponent and get elected governor of California, that will be a big victory in the nation's largest state. — David Axelrod

In 1935, the Los Angeles Police Department, via mayoral directive, sends a battalion of police officers to the Nevada border to stop hitchhikers, primarily Mexican nationals, from entering the state of California. They return after four days and report that they were unable to stem the flow of immigration. — James Frey

Coming from New York, you're kind of indoctrinated with anti-L.A. sentiment, but California is just a really dope state. — Jesse Williams

And now, of course this is another thing I didn't count on, that now as the governor of the state of California, I am selling California worldwide. You see that? Selling. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

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

In California, it's hard to buy all the media, no matter how much money you raise or spend, because it's such a huge state. — John McCain

If we could shut down all sport hunting in a moment, we would. [ ... ] Only 7% of Americans are hunters. That means there are more of us than there are of them. It is simply a matter of democracy. The majority rules in a democracy. We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States ... We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state. — Wayne Pacelle

After years of struggle, the U.S. Supreme Court today has made same-sex marriage a reality in California ... I have directed the California Department of Public Health to advise the state's counties that they must begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in California — Jerry Brown

There's one difference between me and them: I know I'm not qualified. In my opinion, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't qualified to be governor of California. Ronald Reagan wasn't qualified to be governor, let alone president. I was a vice president of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president. My duties consisted of attending meetings and voting. The only thing I remember is that Ronnie never had an original thought and that we had to tell him what to say. That's no way to run a union, let along a state or a country. — James Garner

I want to caucus in Iowa. I'll caucus all over the state. I don't caucus in California. You don't caucus where you live. It doesn't look good. — Pat Paulsen

everyone who comes to California brings a little of his own state with him. His own old state, regardless of where or when, is always lurking in the back of his memory for comparison with what he finds here. — Max Miller

There was also talk of bringing Al Gore to California to help out, but there was concern that Gray Davis and Al Gore in the same state would cause some kind of rolling personality blackout. — Jay Leno

For example, in the state of California, it is illegal to have sexual intercourse with someone under the age of 18; yet, in the same state, having sex with a dead body (i.e., necrophilia), does not have a specific criminal code within the penal system (Hickey, 2005). — Catherine Purcell

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits - no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it - and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect. — Michael Lewis

I don't think the state of California realized there would be this many people here caught up in the freeway system. — Richard Grieco

Larry Flynt, running for governor of California. His goal - change our state bird to the spread eagle. — Craig Kilborn

California's drought affects everyone in the state, from farmers to fishermen, business owners to suburban residents, and everyone has a role to play in using precious water resources as wisely and efficiently as possible. — Frances Beinecke

So many people don't know who's on the State Seal and they don't know, not just in California but the United States of America, things they look at every day and they say, 'Wow! I didn't know that.' — Maria Shriver

On the day the park opened, half the state must have turned up. California weddings that June were small in attendance, the bride, groom, and guests quitting the ceremony for their cars after the second "I do"; especially hasty couples did away with the festivities altogether and simply took their vows en route to the park. — Pam Jones

It's important to remember something: California is not a state built on moderation. We invented motion pictures. We made an electric sports car. We're both the brain (Silicon Valley) and the heart (Hollywood, alas) of this great nation, and meanwhile we grow everyone's strawberries. We're open to innovation. We're open to new ideas. We're open to odd couples - and to strays from all parts of the world. Look at our last governor: an Austrian body builder and son of a Nazi married to John F. Kennedy's niece. Anything can happen. — Scott Hutchins

This is Reagan country. Yeah! And perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California's Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State. — Sarah Palin

I am calling on everyone in this state to put the chaos and the division of the recall behind us and do what's right for this great state of California. — Gray Davis

I didn't finish high school - left home when I was 15. I moved away to Fresno and worked as a grocery clerk. I went to college part-time at California State Fresno, and then ended up finishing in two and a half years because I wanted to get on with things. — Joy Covey

Also, I think I'd like to see more out-of-state shows, man. As bad as I hate to say this, I'm looking forward to playing for nobody. That's what happens when you're a guy like me and you travel out to Sacramento, California. — Cody Johnson

Testifying for Dr. Privitera ... To these 19 cancer victims, the enforcement of (California) Health and Safety Code Sect. 1701.1, the denial of them medical treatment, albeit unorthodox, albeit unapproved by a state agency, must surely take on a Kafka-esque, a nightmare quality. No demonstrated public anger, no compelling interest of the state warrants an Orwellian intrusion into the most private of zones of privacy. — Rose Bird

California is no longer a state, it's a hedge fund. — Craig T. Nelson

California has become the first American state where there is no majority race, and we're doing just fine. If you look around the room, you can see a microcosm of what we can do in the world ... You should be hopeful on balance about the future. But it's like any future since the beginning of time
you're going to have to make it. — William J. Clinton

I started attending community college when I was 14 or 15, just doing general education stuff like history and mathematics. Then I went on to California State University Long Beach to pursue a degree in journalism. And then I ended up dropping out to found Oculus. — Palmer Luckey

It was there that I wanted, out there somewhere, when I sat elbow-to-elbow with my giggling friends and let my thoughts swirl up and away from the three-mile radius of our small town lives. In my head, I careened out of town and across state lines, until the landscape became strange and unfamiliar. I wanted to see all of it. Everything. The vast expanses of the flat Midwest, miles of horizontal earth with the curving horizon at its end. Strange, stunted trees and driftwood skeletons on the lonely windswept beaches of the farthest coasts. Towering oaks hung thick with the gray lace of Spanish moss, looming like hovering parents over shaded southern dirt. The California sun, dipping and disappearing into the ocean, tipping the waves with orange light. — Kat Rosenfield

I like living in California. I think it's the best state, although we're supposedly the most hated state of all. — Madeline Zima

What is Southern California but an ever-changing dreamscape backdrop for the postmodern ideal? The psychology of the postmodern world is the continual state of change as we live in its idealist manufactured dream, built by developers. — John Van Hamersveld

California is a very important state. As goes California, so goes the nation. We need to have strong leadership. Someone who can hit the ground running. — Xavier Becerra

Every four years, the Republican Party pines for another Reagan. But Ronald Reagan, Governor of California for eight years, couldn't get elected in today's not-so-Golden State. Jerry Brown, Governor Moonbeam back in the Seventies, now presides as Governor Twilight, lead vampire of a malign alliance of unionized bureaucrats and a swollen dependency class that maintains them in office at the expense of a remorselessly shrinking productive class. As the nation's demographic profile trends ever more Californian perhaps Norquist's predictions of naturally conservative Hispanics pining for a new Coolidge will come to fruition. Or perhaps Bob Beckel's more crudely determinative analysis will prove correct
that, in a multicultural society, jostling identity groups will stick with the party of ethnocultural spoils. — Mark Steyn

While I am humbled by the widespread encouragement of so many and hold in the highest esteem those who serve us in federal office, I know that my head and my heart, my young family's future, and our unfinished work all remain firmly in the State of California - not Washington D.C. Therefore I will not seek election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. — Gavin Newsom

I just got back from Hawaii on Saturday, and it's so depressing how quickly all the stresses and the stressful energy of L.A. comes bombarding back. Everyone's in a rush, you're annoying everyone, get out of their way, everyone's most important than you are, has got somewhere more important to be - very draining town. But I still love it in many ways. I wouldn't leave California. I think it's a fantastic state, if you can't be in Hawaii all the time. — Natalie Maines

California is an unusual and electric kind of state - it's wonderful. All sorts of things happen there. — Mario Cuomo

California is the only state in the union where you can fall asleep under a rose bush in full bloom and freeze to death. — W.C. Fields

Instead, California is one of only 10 states that provides in-state college and university tuition to illegal immigrants. That's grossly unfair to a legal high school student who moves out of California for a year, then returns to attend college. — Elton Gallegly

Oregon is outflanking California as the most left wing state in the union. — Bill O'Reilly

You just finished a job, as you refer to it. You must be tired and I can only imagine the enervating quality of an added threat of the state pen."

"California's state pen is Fisher," Cat said. "It can write upside down, but I think a pencil works better for that. — Nina Post

California is a state peculiarly addicted to swift enthusiasms. It is a seed-bed of all manner of cults and theories, taken up, and dropped, with equal speed. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I'm fairly certain the state of California wants its residents to die. Why else make curvy roads with no guardrails on the side of a cliff with zero shoulder? One false move and we're plummeting over the edge and into the rocky Pacific. Yay for bloody vacations and adventures. — Sarah Noffke