Quotes & Sayings About Oklahoma

I started out as a business manager for a national hotel chain based in Oklahoma. I got frustrated with what was happening in the state capital - the high cost of doing business and a lack of educated workers. — Mary Fallin

The spoiled superstar brat wouldn't get far in Oklahoma City. We're very value-conscious. Our city was settled in a land run. Those 10,000 people were desperate for a better life. — Mick Cornett

You could have a hit in California that no one had heard of in Oklahoma. — Wanda Jackson

I am practical by nature, and I'd heard that being a writer or an artist is a good way to starve! So I was an economics major at Oklahoma State, and then received an M.S. from Cornell in Agricultural Resource and Managerial Economics. I knew if I wanted to write I would do it on my own, but I knew I wouldn't make myself study economics on my own. — Ally Carter

I grew up a wrestler; for a long time in Oklahoma I was a wrestler. — Christian Kane

I like to call the ethos I grew up with 'Oklahoma values.' But you'd be just as accurate if you said 'American values.' Except for our lack of a seacoast, Oklahoma has a little bit of just about everything that's American. — J. C. Watts

I spent every bit of my money to try and get a Mickey Mantle card, and I don't have one. Growing up in Oklahoma, Mickey Mantle was my idol. And here I am, and I'd go pick cotton to have enough money, and I'd buy all of these packs, and I'd chew all of the gum, and I'd never find a Mickey Mantle card. — Johnny Bench

Wolf was taken aback. This was the 1950s, years before the advent of cholesterol-lowering drugs and aggressive measures to prevent heart disease. Heart attacks were an epidemic in the United States. They were the leading cause of death in men under the age of sixty-five. It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease. Wolf decided to investigate. He enlisted the support of some of his students and colleagues from Oklahoma. They gathered together the death certificates from residents of the — Malcolm Gladwell

The trial of hapless Timothy McVeigh shared many things in common
with the "trials" of other scapegoats from the past. Like Bruno Richard
Hauptmann, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan, McVeigh received inept
legal representation. Stephen Jones presented almost no defense, resting
after only three and a half days and just twenty-five witnesses. Even
establishment talking head attorney Alan Dershowitz would criticize the
incompetent defense McVeigh received. — Donald Jeffries

Honestly, I'd rather be anywhere else. Even home, where my dad begins almost every conversation with, "You should lose the black clothes and wear something with color." Puh-lease. Like I want to look like every Barbie clone in Hell High, a.k.a. Oklahoma's insignificant Haloway High School. Ironically, Dad doesn't appreciate the bright blue streaks in my originally blond/now-dyed-black hair. Go figure. That's color, right? — Gena Showalter

It is so basic as to be mundane, but in disaster relief, all the good will in the world can go to hell in a hand basket if the logistics don't work. In Ethiopia at the best of times, the logistics are difficult. It is a huge country - about the same size as Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma combined. It is also a transportation nightmare. — William Shawcross

There were colored and white waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to the bus stations, as people may already know. But there were actually colored windows at the post office in, for example, Pensacola, Florida. And there were white and colored telephone booths in Oklahoma. And there were separate windows where white people and black people would go to get their license plates in Indianola, Mississippi. And there were even separate tellers to make your deposits at the First National Bank in Atlanta. — Isabel Wilkerson

People should quit their jobs, move to Oklahoma, move in with 34 people, pay $100 a month in rent and start a band or start painting. That way you'll feel like you have a purpose if you lose your mind, and you'll have some fun on the way. — Josh Jones

Oklahoma City bombing was done on purpose. Did you know the Federal Government blew up their own building to blame it on the militias and to get rid of some people that weren't cooperating with the system? — Kent Hovind

But I was always a bit of a gypsy, anyway. I spent five years at Oklahoma State, five years at Miami and moved on after winning the national championship, and five years with the Cowboys. So, I was ready to move on. We won back-to-back Super Bowls, and I felt that I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. — Jimmy Johnson

When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears. — Brad Pitt

Even a man accused of the worst act of terrorism ever committed in this country - especially such a man - is entitled to the best possible defense. This concept is a cornerstone of our justice system. — Stephen Jones

We need to make sure that we have one another's back and recognize the fact that patriots come in all different sizes, shapes, colors, not all of them wear uniforms, some of them are employers, some of them are the family members who stay at home and take of business back here in the state of Oklahoma. — Harry M. Wyatt III

A nation that spends billions to fix international problems will not have much left over for the victims of tornadoes in Oklahoma. — Deacon Jones

We've already seen how it's going to come in, in a truck, like it did at Oklahoma City at the Federal building or it's going to come in by plane, like it did at the World Trade Center. — Richard Drew

The truth of the matter is that I live on an isolated cattle ranch in the middle of Oklahoma and that's not going to change. — Ree Drummond

I have family in Oklahoma City. — Blake Shelton

I frankly encountered more anti-Semitism in the northeast than I did in Oklahoma, but not much either place. Anti-Semitism is not part of my life. — Tim Blake Nelson

I grew up in trailer houses in New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. — Ronnie Dunn

I tried to film 'Leaves of Grass' in Oklahoma, but it was literally about a million dollars less to shoot in Louisiana. — Tim Blake Nelson

Me? Rebuild" I shook my head."First off, I don't know anything about construction or reconstruction. And second, have you been down there? Have you seen it? So many people haven't moved back or rebuilt, and I totally get it. Why invest all that time and money when each hurricane season brings a new threat?"
Aimee regarded me with a steady blue gaze. "Why build skyscrapers in San Francisco that might be knocked down by an earthquake? Or why build farms in Kansas and Oklahoma that might get blown away by a tornado?" She snorted, and it seemed so uncharacteristic for the elegant old woman that I almost laughed. "Where did they want us to go, anyway? I figure if we're still breathing, then we're meant to keep going. So we rebuild. We start over. It's just what we do. — Karen White

Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has. — Edna Ferber

I believe that conservative solutions can help families of every race, every economic background, and every town in Oklahoma. — James Lankford

I don't want to look like Connecticut, no offense, I don't want to look like Oklahoma, I don't want to look like California. I want to be uniquely Texas. And that's not to diss anybody else. — Rick Perry

I get around OK with a toolbox. As a kid, I picked up skills following my dad through the oil fields of Oklahoma and West Texas. My wife Janine is hard to impress, but she does think it's cool when I fix things around the house. — Ronnie Dunn

I love eating at Sonic with my family in Oklahoma. And no, I'm not kidding. — Kristin Chenoweth

Well, I never been to HeavenBut I been to OklahomaWell, they tell me I was born thereBut I really don't rememberIn Oklahoma, not ArizonaWhat does it matter, what does it matter? — Hoyt Axton

Disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11 were time-limited. The children who were affected psychologically could go to a place of normalcy. — Irwin Redlener

I myself am consummately middle class. We grew up in upper-middle-class suburbs in Oklahoma City, and that's very much the same ethos as what Richard Yates and John Cheever wrote about. — Blake Bailey

Overall, I think any opportunity to expose people to art on a mass level - to have some kid in Oklahoma say to his mother, 'I want to be an artist' - is a good thing. — Jeffrey Deitch

Growing up in Texas and Oklahoma, Ben Johnson was more famous than John Wayne to some of us. I knew him. I worked with him on a low budget film years ago, and we'd sit around at night while waiting for a shot. — Bill Paxton

Our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change. The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year [2011] can each be attributed to climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills. — James Hansen

Before me, my grandfathers, my uncles and my father were all boxers because Native Americans had to box in boarding schools. But in my time, when I grew up in Lawton Oklahoma, we didn't have boxing. I was a wrestler. — George Tahdooahnippah

We lived in the Portland Avenue Stacks, a sprawling hive of discolored tin shoeboxes rusting on the shores of I-40, just west of Oklahoma City's decaying skyscraper core. — Ernest Cline

We had the best-equipped and we have the best-trained military force on the face of the earth, right here in Oklahoma. — Harry M. Wyatt III

Oklahoma's always been good to me. — Alan Jackson

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent. — Tom Perrotta

I remember the early 1980s, when I first got one of these fabulous film critic jobs. The downside was sitting through 'Splatteria III: The Dismembering of the Clampett Clan' or 'The Oklahoma Meatgrinder Massacre' or some such. The headaches unleashed by watching attractive kids die week after week after week cannot be imagined. — Stephen Hunter

With the Gap Band coming from Oklahoma, other artists would tease us by calling us cowboys. We didn't grow up on a ranch, but we took that style to the stage. We knew that it was corny, but at least it was ours. — Charlie Wilson

Liberals pretend to believe that when two random hoodlums kill a gay man in Oklahoma, it's evidence of a national trend, but when a million people buy a book, it proves absolutely nothing about the book-buying public. — Ann Coulter

Becca watched Tucker bend at the waist. Mmm, mmm. He was sure built nice. From the top of his felt hat to the tips of his worn leather boots. Those leather chaps he'd just slung around his hips weren't too bad, either.
He reached back to buckle the chap straps first around one jean-clad thigh, and then the other. And she'd thought the rodeo would be boring. Ha! She could watch Tucker do this all day. Buckle and unbuckle. Bend and stand.
She let out a sign filled with pure contentment. "All right, Em. I'll admit it. Cowboys are hot."
Next to her, Emma laughed. "Oh, yeah. — Cat Johnson

When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush. — Elizabeth Warren

Apparently textbooks were an endangered species here in Bixby, Oklahoma. — Scott Westerfeld

Oklahoma holds ancient power within its red dirt, — P.C. Cast

I'll keep us out of war with Oklahoma! — Kinky Friedman

We don't have milk cows. People have so many stereotypes of people from where I come from - Oklahoma. We don't ride around in covered wagons, either. — Carrie Underwood

I'm from Oklahoma. I mean, you can't have good hair in Oklahoma. That's why everyone wears hats. The wind just messes it up. — Ronnie Dunn

A young Harvard student, traveled west to Oklahoma to live among the Kiowa and participate in the solemn rites of the peyote cult. In one photograph the land appears as a blur of dust, the sky fading to gray, the air darkened by soil worked loose by the wind, the farmhouses — Wade Davis

I like California but I'm dyed-in-the-wool Oklahoma. I see a deer in L.A., and everybody's standing around it taking pictures. Back home, that's the enemy! — Blake Shelton

People in Oklahoma don't wake up every morning wondering what the government is going to do for them. — Mick Cornett

Oklahoma is the cultural center of the universe. — Hoyt Axton

Just think about it: what in the name of God would Alabama be without the University of Alabama? What would Oklahoma be without the University of Oklahoma? Nothing. — Dan Jenkins

Where were they from originally? The Seabolts?"
"I don't know, Idaho, Oklahoma, Iowa. One of those red-neck states with vowels on both ends."
"You mean like Alaska? — Dana Stabenow

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. — John Steinbeck

I was born in Colorado and grew up in Pennsylvania with family in Texas and Oklahoma. — Adam McKay

The government sent the Indians to Oklahoma. They had a treaty that said, 'You shall have this land as long as grass grows and water flows.' It was not only a good rhyme but looked like a good treaty, and it was till they struck oil. Then the Government took it away from us again. They said the treaty only refers to 'Water and Grass; it don't say anything about oil.' — Will Rogers

When I was a freshman at Oklahoma in 1946, the game was sold out - and it's been sold out ever since. — Darrell Royal

My state's constitution seems to contain a provision requiring that once every two years we must pass a bill which dazzles the entire country in its glittering, bejeweled stupidity. Not all of them are bad. I rather like the absurd ones. For instance, it is illegal to go whale hunting in Oklahoma. That law is certainly a nice gesture (whales both sing and have giant brains, putting them one point ahead of many legislators). But humpback poaching has never really been problematic in our part of the country, what with it being landlocked and all. — Andrew Heaton

I find myself hoping I can get on a TV show, and then people from Oklahoma will come to my restaurant. Then I'll be able to make enough money to open my own place. — Alexandra Guarnaschelli

I was a kid from Oklahoma who never wanted to be a singer, but was told I could sing. And things snowballed. — Patti Page

When they got to Oklahoma there were still more white people waiting for them, squatting on the land the Indians had been promised in the latest worthless treaty. Slow learners, the bunch. — Colson Whitehead

Growing up in Oklahoma, there wasn't much to do. Play sports, do a lot of drugs, or read and watch movies, which is what I did. — Bill Hader

He wrestled his focus back to his present dilemma. The two of them standing in a cheap hotel room with nothing to do besides the obvious things a man and woman could do in a room with not much more than bed in it. — Cat Johnson

And so we have this Oklahoma City, set upon a foundation so strong that it cannot be shaken. What shall you, the inheritors, do with this city? We hope that you shall make it more and more the city beautiful, more and more the city intellectual, more and more the city spiritual. For these three, beauty, mind, and spirit are the choicest diadems of life.

"Morituri vos salutamus!" Which, in this case, may be translated, "We, the Pioneers, salute you! — Angelo C. Scott

I'm more focused on the positives of why I'm here. I'll be able to address those things in due time. Right now it's about the Thunder and Oklahoma City. — Derek Fisher

She thought about her cousins in Oklahoma, which was odd, since she'd never spent much time with them. She didn't even know them very well. Now she was sorry about that. — Rick Riordan

Every little prick out there wants me to lift them. I had this one kid from Oklahoma, big fat shitter he was. Legs as fat as a Downers forehead screaming Up, up, Hulk up! at me for ten minutes until I had no other choice. Fat fucker damn near put my back out and then his old man stiffs me with Canadian dollars. Canadian, can you believe that shit?! — David Louden

I think it's awful that the state of Oklahoma a couple of years ago passed this law to give the same tuition to illegals as they do to people who are residents of Oklahoma. I think it's wrong. — Ernest Istook

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman. — J. C. Watts

My State Senate district was in the northern part of Oklahoma and they were redrawing the districts. — Don Nickles

I've been a Lakers fan since growing up in Oklahoma. My hometown's finally got the Thunder, which is really exciting, but I've still got to stick with the Lakers. — Matt Kemp

After I released 'Jesus, Take the Wheel,' people started saying, Oh, it's kind of risky. You're coming out with a religious song. And I was thinking, Really? I grew up in Oklahoma; I always had a close relationship with God. I never thought it was risky in the least. If anything, I thought it was the safest thing I could do. — Carrie Underwood

Books were heavy shit. Next time he offered to move someone, he'd make sure the person was less of an intellectual. — Cat Johnson

I understand the significance of being one of 18 senators in Oklahoma history. — James Lankford

You may be big in New York, but in Walters, Oklahoma, you're nobody. — Abe Lemons

Not only are Puerto Ricans citizens by birth, but one would be hard-pressed to find a Puerto Rican without a sister in New York or a son in Chicago, a cousin in Orlando or a daughter in Honolulu or Oklahoma City. — Luis A. Ferre

Honestly, I think winning changes all of that. It doesn't matter where you are - it could be Timbuktu - if you win, people will watch, they'll follow and they'll support. It's my responsibility to put a team on the floor that will win, and that attracts players. Look at the teams that have been successful in the NBA. Yes, you have big, glamorous cities like L.A. But Miami has won, and so has San Antonio. Oklahoma City is a very successful team. They're not the biggest markets. — Masai Ujiri

Are there any swamps in Oklahoma? Yes, there is. It's called Tulsa. — Bobby Heenan

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and I got the opportunity to take some on-camera classes while I was in school and met a casting director who informed me quite a bit before my move out to L.A.; it made L.A. feel possible, coming from Oklahoma and not having a family that was in the industry. — Laura Spencer

My personal style has developed from growing up in Oklahoma, middle America, where I was wearing jeans and cowboy boots and where people were not running around in miniskirts. — Suzy Amis

I started [in television] as a local sportscaster in Oklahoma City and that will always be my love. It's kind of what I live for. — Chris Harrison

I got started in Oklahoma. That's where I was born. Population down there is one-third Indians, one-third Negroes and one-third white people. — Woody Guthrie

A tumbleweed went rolling by in the street. I'm not even kidding. An actual, literal tumbleweed. Man, Oklahoma. — Jim Butcher

If you don't like the weather in Oklahoma, wait a minute and it'll change. — Will Rogers

We had a branding problem. We have allowed ourselves to be branded by our tragedies. If you said 'Oklahoma City,' chances are the next word out of your mouth was 'bombing.' — Mick Cornett

In the 1830s, the forced removal of Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles from the fertile lands of the southeastern United States, under the direction of President Andrew Jackson, amassed even more land for cotton cultivation and expansion of the wealth of white people. As Native Americans made the involuntary treks to what would become Indian Country or Oklahoma, white Americans dislocated approximately one million African Americans through the domestic slave trade, moving them from the Upper South to the Lower South and westward, destroying families, and severing community ties in order to create plantations and cultivate cotton. — Heather Andrea Williams

The kind of support we have in Oklahoma City, it's the best in the NBA. Phenomenal. Beards in the crowd, the whole nine. The city is really something special. — James Harden

I like the phrase "shot heard 'round the world," and I don't think there's any doubt the Oklahoma City blast was heard around the world. — Timothy McVeigh

Thanks to the centrifugal pump, places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas had thrown on the garments of fertility for a century, pretending to greenery and growth as they mined glacial water from ten-thousand-year-old aquifers. They'd played dress-up-in-green and pretended it could last forever. They'd pumped up the Ice Age and spread it across the land, and for a while they'd turned their dry lands lush. Cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans
vast green acreages, all because someone could get a pump going. Those places had dreamed of being different from what they were. They'd had aspirations. And then the water ran out, and they fell back, realizing too late that their prosperity was borrowed, and there would be no more coming. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I wore bell bottoms in elementary school. Never wore elephant bells. Remember, this was middle Oklahoma in the '70s. — Garth Brooks

When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states. — Will Rogers

I've never seen a tornado and I've lived in Oklahoma City basically my whole life. It's not like we're infested with them on a continual basis. But you learn to live with the warnings. And you learn what to do if one is coming your way. And then you cross your fingers and make the best judgments you can. — Mick Cornett

I want my permanent address to be in Oklahoma. Someday, when I get married and I have kids, that's where I want to raise my kids. — Carrie Underwood

I have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud. — N. Scott Momaday

A fertilizer bomb that kills hundreds in Oklahoma. Fuel-laden civil jets that kill 4000 in New York. A sanctions policy that kills one and a half million in Iraq. A trade policy that immiserates continents. You can make a bomb out of anything. The ones on paper hurt the most. — Raj Patel