Smart City Quotes & Sayings

Even after the Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints, I have noticed a large number of people implying, with bad jokes, that Cajuns aren't smart. I would like to state for the record that I disagree with that assessment. Anybody that would build a city
5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can't swim is a genius. — Larry The Cable Guy

the most important street smart in a city of strangers is simply good manners. — Eugene Salomon

CM has always stood for one thing: Chicago Made. Chick Magnet? That's preposterous. Girls don't like me. I was born and raised in Chicago. The city made me. Punk is just because I've always been a smart-mouthed, wise-ass punk. I still am. I was the guy, if a bunch of football players were messing with one of my friends, I'd walk over there and spit in their face. — CM Punk

Because of the city's fragmentary, far-flung floor plan, accessible almost exclusively by car, there is no collective sense of community, no overarching sense of "we." ... It's a city of transplants ... Everyone moves to LA with plans not to stay. But then we stay. Because somewhere along the way, this Garden of Forking Freeways burrows itself inside our hardened, from-elsewhere hearts, and slowly, we begin to love the place we claimed to hate. Los Angeles is such a misunderstood city... It's a place that's impossible not to ridicule until you...fully appreciate all its endearing inconsistencies. It is ugly, and it is also beautiful. It is fast; it is slow. It is sexy, and it is also smart. — Lilibet Snellings

I walked down Paseo del Prado, losing myself to the sights, sounds, and dense magic of the city. There's something weirdly calming about being alone in a big city. It made me feel like the universe was hugely generous, and that my species was so damn smart to have constructed such a beautiful city. — Kate Klise

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war ... to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism. — Pete Stark

The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families. — Malcolm Gladwell

We gotta have a toast." Rocky on her pins, Peabody used the table for balance. She managed to raise her glass without spilling more than half its contents on Eve's head. "To the best fucking cop in the whole stinking city, who's gonna marry the sexiest sumbitch I, personally, have ever laid eyes on, and who, because she's so goddamn smart, has seen to it that I'm perman'ly attached to Homicide. Which is where any half-blind asshole could tell you I belong. So there." She downed the rest of her drink, fell backward into her chair, and grinned foolishly.
"Peabody," Eve said and flicked a finger under her eyes. "I've never been more touched."
"I'm shit faced. Dallas."
"The evidence points to it. — J.D. Robb

Every month that passed, he felt less sure of where he belonged among the human traffic in the city below. Once he had believed he was smart and might become something - not a big something, like the people who frequented the airport, but a middle something. Being on the roof, even if he had come up to steal things, was a way of not being what he had become in Annawadi. — Katherine Boo

If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia. — Jim Rogers

Women are smart in business and dumb in love. They won't date outside their zip code, let alone outside the city. They are city snobs. — Patti Stanger

Smart is not just a word; it's an attitude. — Ogwo David Emenike

Ah, we're the infection, Sma.' He turned and sat down on the steps, looking back towards the city and the sea. 'We're the ones who're different, we're the self-mutilated, the self-mutated. This is the mainstream; we're just like very smart kids; infants with a brilliant construction kit. They're real because they live the way they have to. We aren't because we live the way we want to. — Iain M. Banks

Ten years have passed and every day that I walk throughout the city, I feel honored to be a part of it - and atom in the blood of a beating heart belonging to the most wonderfully diverse, smart, creative, passionate being. — Melisa Singh

Homelessness is illegal. In my city no one is homeless although there are an increasing number of criminals living on the street. It was smart to turn an abandones class into a criminal class, sometimes people feel sorry for the down and outs, they never feel sorry for criminals, it has been a great stabilizer. — Jeanette Winterson

Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. — George Carlin

I somehow got the idea that oak floors were located exclusively in New York City. This came chiefly from watching Woody Allen movies. I wanted to live someplace that looked like Mia Farrow's apartment in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (little did I know that it was Mia Farrow's apartment). To me, this kind of space did not connote wealth. These were places where paint was peeling and the rugs were frayed, places where smart people sat around drinking gin and tonics, having interesting conversations, and living, according to my logic, in an authentic way. — Meghan Daum

Don't worry, he's coming with me to investigate things."
"In the city?" Jim asked.
"Yes."
"That's a great idea. You both should go. To the city."
Curran and I looked at each other.
"He's trying to get rid of us," I said.
"You think he's planning a coup?" Curran wondered.
"I hope so." I turned to Jim. "Is there any chance you'd overthrow the tyrannical Beast Lord and his psychotic Consort?"
"Yeah, I want a vacation," Curran said.
Jim leaned toward us and said in a lowered voice, "You couldn't pay me enough. This is your mess, you deal with it. I have enough on my plate."
He walked away.
"Too bad," Curran said.
"I don't know, I think we could convince him to seize the reins of power."
Curran shook his head. "Nahh. He's too smart for that. — Ilona Andrews

There were icons of the Magdalen on the walls and paintings in the Western manner, all kitsch, trash. Mary M., Lucas thought, half hypnotized by the chanting in the room beside him; Mary Moe, Jane Doe, the girl from Migdal in Galilee turned hooker in the big city. The original whore with the heart of gold. Used to be a nice Jewish girl, and the next thing you know, she's fucking the buckos of the Tenth Legion Fratensis, fucking the pilgrims who'd made their sacrifice at the Temple and were ready to party, the odd priest and Levite on the sly.
Maybe she was smart and funny. Certainly always on the lookout for the right guy to take her out of the life. Like a lot of whores, she tended towards religion. So along comes Jesus Christ, Mr. Right with a Vengeance, Mr. All Right Now! Fixes on her his hot, crazy eyes and she's all, Anything, I'll do anything. I'll wash your feet with my hair. You don't even have to fuck me. — Robert Stone

I'm street smart. You can't con me. But that's just from living in New York. Now if a guy came from Mississippi somewhere, Ohio somewhere, to New York City for the first time, he don't have the street smarts. You can take him. — J. B. Smoove

Most people work fifty weeks a year so they can do this the other 2. Well the smart ones live in a ski resort, where the boss lets them have powder snow days off. And almost forty feet of snow falls every winter thats a lot of days off. A lot of doing what you moved here to do. Most major ski resorts are now so big that regardles of what kind ofjob you have in a city there's probably a job almost exactly like yours in a ski rsort like this. So quit your job and rent that U-haul trailer now so next winter this can be you. Not you just sitting there watching this and wishing that this was you. — Warren Miller

Touring the city, I began to wonder how Americans could build a skyscraper in a year, but in four decades of independence, Malawi couldn't even bring clean water to a village. We could send witch planes into the skies and ghost trucks along the roads, but we couldn't even keep electricity in our homes. We always seemed to be struggling to catch up. Even with so many smart and hardworking people, we were sill living and dying like our ancestors. — William Kamkwamba

I did not come from an academic background. My father was a smart man, but he had a fifth-grade education. He and all his friends were plumbers. They were all born around 1905 in great poverty in New York City and had to go to work when they were 12 or 13 years old. — Leonard Susskind

And the City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its curbstones, offering you melons and green apples on the corner. Racks of yellow head scarves; strings of Egyptian beads. Kansas fried chicken and something with raisins call attention to an open window where the aroma seems to lurk. And if that's not enough, doors to speakeasies stand ajar and in that cool dark place a clarinet coughs and clears its throat waiting for the woman to decide on the key. She makes up her mind and as you pass by informs your back that she is daddy's little angel child. The City is smart at this: smelling and good and looking raunchy; sending secret messages disguised as public signs: this way, open here, danger to let colored only single men on sale woman wanted private room stop dog on premises absolutely no money down fresh chicken free delivery fast. And good at opening locks, dimming stairways. Covering your moans with its own. — Toni Morrison

Maintaining a safe distance, she practiced extreme caution as they headed further and further away from the center of the city. She tried to act casual when passing people on the street while simultaneously keeping an eye on the elusive John Smith. That part wasn't hard of course because most of the people headed in their direction moved submissively to the other side as her mysterious new neighbor passed. Choking down a feeling of dread, she wondered if she'd be smart to do the same and head back to the apartment. Against her better judgment, Evangeline pushed on. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

When Sarsine saw Kestrel, her eyes narrowed to mere cracks and Kestrel became very conscious that Sarsine was a tall woman. "For someone with a reputation for being so smart," Sarsine said, "you act like you haven't a thought in your head. Did it never occur to you that I'd worry when you disappeared from the city with no word?"
"I didn't exactly mean to leave."
"Oh, so it just happened."
"Yes."
"The gods made you do it."
Kestrel laughed. "Maybe they did." Then, earnestly, she said, "I'm sorry, Sarsine."
Sarsine folded her arms. "Then make it up to me."
"How?"
Sarsine's expression softened. Now there was an inquisitive gleam in her eye. "Start with the night you left. End with this very moment. And tell me everything."
So Kestrel did. — Marie Rutkoski

Smart habitation is an integrated area of villages and a city working in harmony and where the rural and urban divide has reduced to thin line. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

New York City is a tinderbox. The Sons of the Serpent - a white supremacist group with a twisted history, deep pockets, and long reach - declared it a combat zone. As they have many times before, they're unashamedly ginning bigotry and hatred into violence and bloodshed. But this time, they've gotten smart about it. Instead of parading through the streets in hoods and robes ... they've gone undercover. Dozens upon dozens of them, hiding inside the New York justice system so they can control the law. Control the people. And as God is my witness, I will drive them out and strike them down ... no matter what the cost. — Mark Waid

It has taken time and the blundering wisdom and anarchic greed of our ancestry to construct the modern city of consolidated institutions. It is a great historically amassed communal creation. If you fly above it at night, it is a jeweled wonder of the universe, floating like a giant liner on the sea of darkness. It is smart, accomplished, sophisticated, and breathtakingly beautiful. And it glimmers and sparkles as all things breakable glimmer and sparkle. You wonder how much God had to do with this, how much of the splendor and insolence of the modern city creatively built from the disparate intentions of generations of men comes of the inspiration of God. Because it is the city of the unremarked God, the sometime-thing God, the God of history. — E.L. Doctorow

When the students were asked to identify their race on a pretest questionnaire, that simple act was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement - and If a white student from a prestigious private high school gets a higher SAT score than a black student from an inner-city school, is it because she's truly a better student, or is it because to be white and to attend a prestigious high school is to be constantly primed with the idea of "smart"? — Malcolm Gladwell