Quotes & Sayings About Philadelphia

Someone thought that I dropped out of Harvard. I am a college dropout, but I dropped out of Temple University in Philadelphia. — Paul F. Tompkins

Cats do not abide by the laws of nature. — Charlie Day

I spoke at a woman's club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young lady said to me afterwards, "Well, that sounds very nice, but don't you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?" I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems to prefer to be on the throne. — Anna Howard Shaw

My father's father wrote for a Philadelphia newspaper and aspired to be a playwright. We had in our house a couple of crazy unproduced plays that he had written. For the one creative writing class I took in my life, I didn't do any writing - I decided that I would plagiarize his terrible play to not fail the class. — Stephen Gaghan

They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown. — Joseph J. Ellis

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

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING FOR RED VELVET SURPRISE CUPCAKES 4 ounces cream cheese (I used Philadelphia Brand in the rectangular silver package - half a package was 4 ounces) ¼ cup salted butter (½ stick, 2 ounces, pound) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups powdered sugar (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) Place the cream cheese and the butter in a medium-size microwave-safe bowl. (I used a quart measuring cup.) Microwave on HIGH for 30 seconds. Stir. If you can stir the cream cheese and the butter smooth, take the bowl out and put it on the counter. If it's still not soft enough to stir, microwave on HIGH in 20-second intervals until it is. Add the vanilla extract to your bowl and stir that in. Add the powdered sugar, a half-cup at a time, stirring after each addition. Continue to add powdered sugar until the frosting is spreadable, not runny. — Joanne Fluke

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 told my parents she's a low-income student from inner-city Philadelphia who's going through some tough times at home right now, and I'm doing this as an outreach program through Rosewood Day. Amazingly, they bought it. — Sara Shepard

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

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, 'The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.' We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth. — Ronald Reagan

I live in Philadelphia, and my wife and I do a lot of theater out in the Philadelphia community. — Rob McClure

I think Philadelphia has been underrated over the years as a musical region. — Daryl Hall

The day my mother gave us the keys, she also made me and Greta sign a form so that the bank knew our signatures. To get in we had to show our key and sign something so they would know it was really us. I was worried that my signature wouldn't look the same. I wasn't sure when that thing would happen that made it so you always signed your name exactly the same, but it hadn't happened to me yet. So far I'd only had to sign something three times. Once for a code of conduct for the eighth grade field trip to Philadelphia, once for a pact I made with Beans and Frances Wykoski in fifth grade that we'd never have boyfriends until high school. (Of the three of us, I'm the only one who kept that pact.) — Carol Rifka Brunt

You know what they call a good looking girl in Philadelphia ... a tourist. — Jerry Lawler

These people who judge us should take a city bus or a cab through the South Bronx, the Central Ward of Newark, North Philadelphia, the Northwest section of the District of Columbia or any Third World reservation, and see if they can note a robbery in progress. See if they recognize the murder of innocent people. This is the issue, the myth that the Imperialists should not be confronted and cannot be beaten is eroding fast and we stand here ready to do whatever to make the myth erode even faster, and to say for the record that not only will the Imperialist U.S. lose, but that it should lose. — Kuwasi Balagoon

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

When I wrote 'Silver Linings,' I thought I was writing a book about the Philadelphia Eagles and male bonding, but when the book came out, it was surprising to me that the mental health community embraced it. — Matthew Quick

Despite the way she rallied, the haunted look in her eyes was enough to break him, as lost and lonely as an abandoned child's. — Katherine McIntyre

That woman is going to be the death of me. Seriously, Luca. I ask her to stay here and move in with me and she takes off? What the hell? Get Tristan on the damn phone, and then call the airport and gas up the jet. We, my friend, are going to Philadelphia tonight. She is mine, and it is damn well time she starts to understand precisely what that means. — Kym Grosso

You know how they say Black Flag got in a van, and they brought punk rock to the world? The Strokes got on a bus, and they brought "downtown cool" to the world. Along with the Internet, they were changing everything, not just music. They were changing attitudes. The Strokes were making New York travel with them. I saw kids in Connecticut and Maine and Philadelphia and DC looking like they had just been drinking on Avenue A all night. Sixteen-year-old kids in white belts and Converse Chuck Taylors with the greasy hair - hair that had been clean a week ago. Those kids had probably never even smelled the inside of a thrift store before Is This It came out. They found a band that they wanted to be like. They found their band. APRIL — Lizzy Goodman

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

Philadelphia, where no good deed goes unpunished . . . - STEVE LOPEZ The Philadelphia Inquirer January 15, 1995 — Craig Johnson

I came of baseball age (isn't it always around first grade?) in the last sputtering years of the A's Philadelphia tenancy. I probably plighted my fated troth in 1949, when the A's fluked into a winning season and introduced a pintsize southpaw named Bobby Shantz. — Richard Corliss

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

I floundered in my twenties. Though I wore a long scarf. And when I got to be thirty I got a job at Temple University in Philadelphia. I worked there for seven years, and I finally got fired, mostly for political reasons. — Gerald Stern

I grew up outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a little town, and went to a regular high school. I was a ... very average student in that high school. Then I joined the Navy, and while I was in the Navy, I was in a motorcycle accident and woke up deaf in a hospital. — I. King Jordan

In his competition with Bradford, Franklin had one big disadvantage. Bradford was the postmaster of Philadelphia, and he used that position to deny Franklin the right, at least officially, to send his Gazette through the mail. Their ensuing struggle over the issue of open carriage was an early example of the tension that often still exists between those who create content and those who control distribution systems. — Walter Isaacson

I moved from Philadelphia to California when I was 25, after traveling abroad for a year. I thought I'd come home eventually and settle down, but I didn't. — Kelly Corrigan

I've said many, many, many unkind things about Philadelphia, and I meant every one. — David Lynch

It happened in Chicago in 1886.
On the first of May, strikes paralyzed cities across the country. The Philadelphia Tribune offered a diagnosis: 'The labor element has been bitten by a kind of universal tarantula - it has gone dancing mad.'
Dancing mad were the workers who fought for the eight-hour day and for the right to form unions
...
On every May first, the entire world remembers them. With the passing of time, constitutions, laws, and international accords have proved them right.
But some of the most powerful corporations have yet to find out. They outlaw unions and keep track of the workday with those melting clocks painted by Salvador Dali. — Eduardo Galeano

As a child, I was tortured because my mother was a brilliant seamstress who made most of my clothes. I was despised by the children at school because I looked like I was going to an opening every day. We weren't wealthy at all; we lived in a row house in Philadelphia. — Lynda Resnick

Mitt Romney announced he will fight former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield in a charity boxing match. You can tell that Romney is serious about it. Today, his butler gave him a piggyback ride up the steps of the Philadelphia art museum. — Jimmy Fallon

Hattie's children died in the order in which they were born: first Philadelphia, then Jubilee. — Ayana Mathis

Wilder, Amos. Theopoetic. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976. — David Willis

We need to have Bill Cosby month in Philadelphia. — Chaka Fattah

The passion is my favorite part of the city [Philadelphia]. You go from 'we love you' to 'we hate you' back to 'you walk on water.' You're driving, and somebody might wave or somebody might flip you off. — Jim Thome

When I got out of high school, I joined a local blues band in Philadelphia - Woody's Truck Stop. — Todd Rundgren

First prize was a week in Philadelphia. Second prize was two weeks. — W.C. Fields

Three quarters of the East Coast's refinery capability is located in the Philadelphia region. — Robert Brady

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

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

When I was a child, I was living in the housing projects of Philadelphia. I didn't even have a Christmas tree. — Bill Cosby

A propagandized population has a hard time choosing worthy heroes. It is high time Americans celebrate the Anti-Federalists, for they were correct in predicting the fate of freedom after Philadelphia. — Ilana Mercer

My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Yank Durham. — Joe Frazier

When I was in high school at Northeast Catholic in Philadelphia in the late '30s, I found that drawing caricatures of the teachers and satirizing the events in the school, then having them published in our school magazine, got me some notoriety. — Bil Keane

Delaware River Power Squadron is dedicated to boating safety through education and civic activities in several locations in Philadelphia while also serving the boating public throughout southern Pennsylvania, the Delaware River, and the Chesapeake Bay. — Robert Brady

Jim Fregosi was not only one of the most respected men in baseball, he was a great man. He was a player's manager. He had that special gift as a manager that made you want to get to the field and play your ass off for him. Jim Fregosi was the reason that 1993 was one of the most exciting years in Philadelphia sports history. — Lenny Dykstra

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

Philadelphia merely seems dull because it's next to exciting Camden, New Jersey. — Robert Anton Wilson

Hattie clambered from the train, her skirt still hemmed with Georgia mud, the dream of Philadelphia round as a marble in her mouth and the fear of it a needle in her chest. — Ayana Mathis

At my growing years of 18 to 21 years old in the Minor Leagues, I dreamed of being a Philadelphia Phillie. — Ryne Sandberg

Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between. — James Carville

I come from a long line of downtrodden women who marry alcoholics. All the way back to my Lenni Lanape great-great-great-(lots of greats) grandmother, Scarlet Bird, a red-haired New Jersey Indian who married William Penn. I know this to be true because of the red highlights in my hair, and because, if you ever see the statue of William Penn in Philadelphia, the one that dictates the height of all the buildings in its perimeter, you will notice, if you look at him from behind, that he and I have the exact same rear end. — Wendy Wunder

As Dr. Franklin progressed through Philadelphia's republican streets, his regal trappings drove home the message that honor in America grew from talent, not birth. — David O. Stewart

Alanna Carrington, head witch of the Philadelphia Coven, hurtled his way, and with her, trouble was a guarantee. — Katherine McIntyre

We were in Philadelphia when Manager Pat shifted me from third to short, and right off the bat, I knew I had found my dish. Footwork was more a part of the new position than it had been at third. I suddenly felt I had sprouted wings. A world of new possibilities opened for me. — Bobby Wallace

Here lies W.C.Fields. I'd rather be living in Philadelphia. — W.C. Fields

We are serious about our music here in Philadelphia, and jazz has meant a lot to this city. — Michael Nutter

The prejudice surrounding AIDS exacts a social death which precedes the actual physical one. — Tom Hanks

New Year's Eve, we're going to be doing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Symphony Hall. It makes me feel good, because of all the people they could have had, they wanted me! We do have to do a little work with the rhythm section. — Barbara Cook

The Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the city of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt, and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston, to New Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Philadelphia, our public safety, poverty reduction, health and economic development all start with education. We can't grow the middle class if we don't give our kids the tools they need to innovate and invent. — Michael Nutter

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Fill'd with death, ya pens'll hang ya. — Ron A Swan

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

I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down. And it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black. I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time. — Nina Simone

I've always been intellectually restless, but it is the building part of it that most interests me. It is the constructing of the team that is my favorite part. Anyone who is familiar with the history of the A's franchise, even dating back to Philadelphia, knows that every five or 10 years, you have to tear it apart and rebuild it. — Billy Beane

I'm a Buffalo wing magnet, a sandwich fanatic, a cheesesteak guy. But I'll only get a cheesesteak in Philadelphia. No one else does it right. — Kevin Hart

More than 54,000 jobs in the region are dependent upon the Port of Philadelphia alone. — Robert Brady

You should see what our Founding Fathers used to say to each other and in the early part of our nation. But what they were able to do, especially in Philadelphia in 1787, four months, they argued about what a House should be, what a Senate should be, the power of the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And they had to deal with slavery. — Colin Powell

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

I have quite a few good friends in Philadelphia who were police officers. — Bobby Seale

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

We lived a lovely, middle-class, suburban life in Philadelphia. And I really thought that the TV programs of the '50s, like 'Father Knows Best' and 'The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet' Nelson were documentaries filmed with hidden cameras in our neighborhood. — Richard Corliss

I'd like to get out of Philadelphia. I don't care for the people or their attitude, although they don't bother me or my play. But maybe the Phillies can get a couple of broken bats and shower shoes for me. — Richie Allen

The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol - brighter than my students at university. — Colin Wilson

I don't have many friends in Philadelphia. I sort of have one. I have the dog and someone else. — H. G. Bissinger

I love you Philadelphia. I want to thank you for accepting me, and letting me be me and make this my home forever. — Allen Iverson

I eat stickers all the time dude! — Charlie Day

The Philadelphia Feds manufacturers report for September revealed that despite a sharp slowdown, its prices paid index surged 257 points. — Peter Schiff

Greatness consists not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life. To be great at all one must be great here, now, in Philadelphia. — Russell H. Conwell

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'll play first, third, left. I'll play anywhere - except Philadelphia. — Richie Allen

'Kitchen Confidential' wasn't a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia. — Anthony Bourdain

Brooklyn was like Philadelphia made better by its proximity to Manhattan. — Jonathan Franzen

When you get that nice celebration coming into the dugout and you're getting your ass hammered by guys, there's no better feeling than to have that done. — Matt Stairs

When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair. — David McCullough

I told myself it was the snow - she couldn't possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It's amazing the sorts of things you'll make yourself believe. — Libba Bray

The Good Quality Snob, or wearer of muted tweeds, cut almost exactly the same from year to year, often with a hat of the same material, [is] native to the Boston North Shore, the Chicago North Shore, the North Shore of Long Island, to Westchester County, the Philadelphia Main Line and the Peninsula area of San Francisco. — Russell Lynes

In the early '70s, I started to feel like Philadelphia soul was the black-sheep brother of rock and roll. I decided to try to get away from it. — Daryl Hall

By the way, I like letters. Letter writing has been an important pasttime for the church. I can't promise I'll write you back, but I will read your letter, and I'll do my best to reply. Right now, I'm running about six months behind on writing. And I prefer old-school snail mail: Shane Claiborne, PO Box 12798, Philadelphia, PA 19134. — Shane Claiborne

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

Those pinked-skinned Jesus freaks that made the laws and owned the prisons were makin' more money off the drug game than we ever did. — Connor Pritchard

All through my twenties, I lived in very walkable cities - Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New York. — Elizabeth Banks

The important point of this report [Montague, Massachusetts; July 7, 1774] may be summed up in six resolutions: 1. We approve of the plan for a Continental Congress September 1, at Philadelphia. 2. We urge the disuse of India teas and British goods. 3. We will act for the suppression of pedlers and petty chapmen (supposably vendors of dutiable wares). 4. And work to promote American manufacturing. 5. We ought to relieve Boston. 6. We appoint the 14th day of July, a day of humiliation and prayer. — Edward Pearson Pressey

Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary patriot. — James Madison

I didn't leave home until 27. I was an only child raised in Philadelphia by my mother and grandmother. My grandmother controlled the stove. She made a lot of potato meals - mashed potato, potato souffle, potato pancakes. When we didn't have electricity, we ate romantically by candlelight. — Jill Scott

Tim Tebow may be back in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles. As you remember, he was thrown out of the league when he landed his gyrocopter on the White House lawn. — David Letterman

Some months earlier one of his oldest friends, Junto charter member Hugh Roberts, had written with news of the club and how the political quarreling in Philadelphia had continued to divide the membership. Franklin expressed hope that the squabbles would not keep Roberts from the meetings. "'tis now perhaps one of the oldest clubs, as I think it was formerly one of the best, in the King's dominions; it wants but about two years of forty since it was established." Few men were so lucky as to belong to such a group. "We loved and still love one another; we are grown grey together and yet it is too early to part. Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. When we can stay no longer 'tis time enough then to bid each other good night, separate, and go quietly to bed." And — H.W. Brands

On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia. — Gore Vidal