Tough City Quotes & Sayings

These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners. — Winston Churchill

Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people. I'm supremely confident that Bostonians will pull together, take care of each other, and move forward as one proud city. And as they do, the American people will be with them every single step of the way. — Barack Obama

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

It is a tough city to live in (Detroit) but a great city to be around. There is so much promise. There just needs to be a movement to help push the city beyond the automobile industry. The music business needs to learn how to support itself. — MC Serch

This is really a tough choice," Peri grumbled. "I can either live in estrogen city or testosterone valley." She looked from the men to the women and then stepped towards the females. "But at least in estrogen city there will be chocolate and Jen to keep me entertained." Jen grinned. "We aim to please Peri fairy. — Quinn Loftis

There are competing studies on how much crime drops or doesn't drop when there are strict rules on gun possession and sale. I don't think there's any question that New York City's very tough laws have reduced violence. — Gail Collins

Like any city, we have assholes with pits who try to put on spur of the moment fights to make these cowards think they're tough guys. If they were so tough, they would do the fighting. — Laraine Lebron

I went to the beach a couple of times in New York City. Tough summer out there, but I was pretty excited. I found what I thought at the time was a very rare seashell. And I took it to a friend of mine who works in a museum. And I was really disappointed. It turned out to be just a human ear. — David Letterman

Cops just surrounding me with pistols everywhere.
They put me in the backseat of their car handcuffed,
Pushed out them chests like they're big rough and tough.
A cop come and said 'You'll never sell your guns now.'
I said 'It doesn't matter, you'll sell them anyhow.
You take the guns from me, you sell them for a fee;
Anyway you put it, they'll get in the city!' — KRS-One

Michele Fiore is a fighter for her constituents who gets things done in Carson City. I can always count on Michele to be a passionate advocate for her district who will make the tough votes for our future generations instead of her next election. I hope you will join me in supporting Michele Fiore for Assembly District 4. — Brian Sandoval

But what Dakota most enjoyed about the beginning of winter was the crispness of the air (that practically demanded the wearing of knits) and the way that tough New Yorkers - on the street, in elevators, in subways - were suddenly willing to risk a smile. To make a connection with a stranger. To finally see one another after strenuously avoiding eye contact all year. — Kate Jacobs

Slowly, even though I thought it would never happen, New York lost its charm for me. I remember arriving in the city for the first time, passing with my parents through the First World's Club bouncers at Immigration, getting into a massive cab that didn't have a moment to waste, and falling in love as soon as we shot onto the bridge and I saw Manhattan rise up through the looks of parental terror reflected in the window. I lost my virginity in New York, twice (the second one wanted to believe he was the first so badly). I had my mind blown open by the combination of a liberal arts education and a drug-popping international crowd. I became tough. I had fun. I learned so much.
But now New York was starting to feel empty, a great party that had gone on too long and was showing no sign of ending soon. I had a headache, and I was tired. I'd danced enough. I wanted a quiet conversation with someone who knew what load-shedding was. — Mohsin Hamid

Oh, Williamsburg. There was a point when you seemed like a scary, tough neighborhood, but now it's obvious that the graffiti on your walls gets put there by art students. — Imogen Binnie

It is easy to bare your body, but it is difficult to bare your soul. What works for me is that I am not a city-raised boy with city-raised sensibilities. I can play the vulnerable tough man, the guy with a gun in his hand, tears in his eyes, fire in his heart, innocence in him, and in his arms a woman he loves. — Randeep Hooda

The way I survived growing up in Jersey City was by being funny. It wasn't by being tough. Nobody thought of me as a tough kid, except for the kids I beat up. — Michelle Rodriguez

There are a lot of car bombs and roadside bombs, house bombs, even, in this city planted by ISIS. So - but it's going to be a tough fight ahead, and the Iraqi generals expect to take the city back, the city of Ramadi, by mid-January. — Tom Bowman

He changed his final wad up at the train station. Which was a sad place now. There were homeless people and disturbed people hanging around. There were furtive men with swivel eyes, their hands thrust deep in capacious pockets. There was spray-can graffiti on the walls. Nothing compared to the South Bronx or inner-city Detroit or South-Central LA. But unusual for Germany. Reunification had been a strain. Economically, and socially. And mentally. He had watched it. Like living a comfortable life in a nice little house with your family. And then a whole bunch of relatives moves in. From someplace where they don't really know how to use a knife and fork. Ignorant and stunted people. But German like you. As if a brother had been taken away at birth and locked in a closet. Then in his mid-forties he comes stumbling out again, pale and hunched and blinking. A tough situation to manage. He — Lee Child

Detroit is still seen as the tough city, a city that has a reputation for high crime, ... The tough city thing is fine. Its always had a reputation as that ... You know, Gordie Howe, when I was watching hockey, was the toughest guy in the league playing for the Red Wings. He represented that tough aura. — Eugene Levy

It's a big change for a country boy like me, to be in the limelight in New York City. It was most definitely a tough adjustment. — Brandon Jacobs

One is wearing a uniform of green-and-gray camouflage, as if he were hunting deer in the woods. The other is wearing a uniform of brown-and-beige camouflage, as if he were hunting insurgents in the desert. These two clowns are standing in the driveway of a suburban home, about fifteen minutes from downtown, in a well-developed city of a million people, and they're wearing camouflage. The sad and scary thing about this image is that these guys have no idea how stupid they look. Instead, they're proud, arrogant. They're on display, tough guys fighting bad guys. One of their brethren has been hit, wounded, fallen in the line of duty, and they're pissed about it. They scowl at the neighbors across the street. One wrong word, and they might start shooting. Their fingers are on the triggers. — John Grisham

I'm serious, Jim. You need to put this crap away. You walk into school on Monday talking to me, or anyone else, about the city's pesky troll problem, and you're not exactly going to get a lot of people saying, 'Gee, thanks for the warning.' It'll spread faster than mono. You think things are tough for us now? Jim, this will be the end. I'm sorry if you had a crazy nightmare. I really am. But I can't let you ruin our lives. — Guillermo Del Toro

ISL is a tough place to crack they're the rich and we are the poor you can guarantee that the city is padded with security-" before Kosse could finish Ingra cut in "Yes we are aware of that but the reason we want your help is- — Charon Lloyd-Roberts

The distinctive features of the world's civilisations are not simply and solely the giraffe and the city of Rome, as the children may perhaps have been led to imagine on the first evening, but also the elephant and the country of Denmark, beside many other things. Yes, everyday brought its new animal and its new country, its new kings and its new gods, its quota of those tough little figures which seem to have no significance, but are nevertheless endowed with a life and a value of their own, and may be added together or subtracted from one another at will. And finally poetry, which is grater than any country ; poetry with its bright palaces. — Halldor Laxness

Helen Crawfurd and the Women's Peace Crusade, made a march on the City Chambers, distributing an illegal leaflet in front of police and even to some of the police as well. The women forced their way into the building and the police had a really tough time trying to get them out. Word spread around that several of them had been arrested and this brought out new and very threatening demonstrations. — Willie Gallacher

To succeed in big-city politics requires a powerful, motivating vision of a better world, a plan to get there, a willingness to meet constituents on their terms, and a tough political skin. — Michael Nutter

Right, because they're looking at also organizing the Sunni tribes up around Mosul to take back that city as well. That's the second largest city in Iraq. That's going to be a very, very tough fight. And the Shia militias were not used in Ramadi, and we're told by the Iraqi generals that they don't want any Shia militias up in Mosul, either, to take back that city. So - but again, that's going to be a very, very tough fight. — Tom Bowman

I think the rebuilding of the city has to start with the spirit first. So the music, the vibe, the connection spiritually with the artists. Everybody out here is the main key. A lot of people are still in a lot of tough situations. My heart still goes out to the people of New Orleans. — Doug E. Fresh

People who exist at the margins of society are very much like Alice in Wonderland. They are not required to make the tough decision to risk their lives by embarking on an adventure of self-discovery. They have already been thrust beyond the city's walls that keep ordinary people at a safe distance from the unknown. For at least some outsiders, "alienation" has destroyed traditional presumptions of identity and opened up the mythic hero's path to the possibility of discovery. What outsiders discover in their adventures on the other side of the looking glass is the courage to repudiate self-contempt and recognise their "alienation" as a precious gift of freedom from arbitrary norms that they did not make and did not sanction. At the moment a person questions the validity of the rules, the victim is no longer a victim. — Jamake Highwater

When I became mayor, the city was in tough financial straits. — Ken Boshcoff

My Manager forced me to put my beetle in my own ear, a clear waste and an act that gave me nightmares: of a burning city through which giant carnivorous lizards prowled, eating survivors off of balconies. In one particularly vivid moment, I stood on a ledge as the jaws closed in, heat-swept, and tinged with the smell of rotting flesh. Beetles intended for the tough, tight minds of children should not be used by adults. We still remember a kinder, gentler world. — Jeff VanderMeer

Whenever I'm being invited to the New York City Marathon like today, I need to think twice because I know it's a very tough race. — Martin Lel

She loves most the wet colours of his neck when he bathes. And his chest with with its sweat which her fingers grip when he is over her, and the dark, tough arms in the darkness of his tent, or one time in her room when light from the valley's city, finally free of curfew, rose among them like twilight and lit the colour of his body. — Michael Ondaatje

Times have been tough, the economy has been tough. But I want to bring forward a fantastic manifesto for taking the city forwards. — Boris Johnson

Knowledge goes hand-in-hand with truth - something I learned with a bit of tough love from my Jesuit education first at Regis High School in New York City and then at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. — Anthony Fauci

New York City is a very tough place. I'm tough, too. When people give me a punch in the nose, I react by getting even tougher. — Ivana Trump

I came out of the old Second City in Chicago. Chicago actors are more hard-nosed. They're tough on themselves and their fellow actors. They're self-demanding. — Bill Murray

Football has very direct and strong connections to New Orleans. The game of football has served as a positive beacon in our city. It has given our citizens hope in tough, trying times. — Tom Benson

Right away when I got to college, I realized that being a politician sucks. It's really hard! It wasn't for me. B.J. Novak is convinced that I will run for mayor of Chicago at some point. He begs me to do it. It'd be a tough gig, but I was always very attracted to the idea of helping people and trying to make the city a better place. — Ike Barinholtz

Touring is very grueling. It's very taxing on the body and living out of your suitcase, going from city to city, night after night. It's a tough job. — Janet Jackson