Boston Quotes: Celebrating the Spirit of Beantown

"In Boston serpents whistle at the cold"

"There's a lot of history in Boston and a lot of history, obviously, in New York with all the championships"

"When I go abroad I always sail from Boston because it is such a pleasant place to get away from"

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University"

William F. Buckley, Jr., Journalist

"I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday"

Raymond Chandler, Writer

"I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century"

Rick Moody, Novelist

"The frozen ocean... of Boston life"

Julia Ward Howe, Activist

"Boston is an oasis in the desert, a place where the larger proportion of people are loving, rational and happy"

Julia Ward Howe, Activist

"The fans were so psyched that someone was doing a movie about a Boston fan that they were giving their all"

Jimmy Fallon, Comedian

"I felt like my pregnancy was a sacred moment for me. I stayed in Boston and I didn't work apart from the contracts I have, and then I only let them use my face"

Gisele Bundchen, Model

"Probably the biggest thing that surprises people is that I am obsessed with hockey. I grew up in the Boston area so I am obsessed with hockey since I was a little kid"

Rob Zombie, Musician

"I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there"

Fred Allen, Comedian

"There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?"

Iris Chang, Historian

"One of my first jobs was at the Boston Globe. I worked in the sports department six months a year. When I was ready to graduate, the sports editor gave me a job as a schoolboy sports writer"

Will McDonough, Writer

"At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture"

Jonathan Carroll, Author

"When I started at the Globe 40 years ago, there were seven newspapers in Boston and now there are only two. There were only three or four television stations in Boston and now there are a dozen"

Will McDonough, Writer

"I'm definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I've been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn't have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it's not going to Broadway; it's just a different city"

Todd English, Celebrity

"Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti"

Paul Farmer, Educator

"A few years ago no hotel or restaurant in Boston refused Negro guests; now several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionary stores, will not serve Negroes, even the best of them"

Ray Stannard Baker, Journalist

"I guarantee you, if you could give me 10 points in all those seventh games against the Boston Celtics, instead of Bill Russell having 11 rings, I could've at least had nine or eight"

Wilt Chamberlain, Athlete

"The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College"

Godfried Danneels, Clergyman

"We did experiments with the Boston Symphony for many years where we measured the angles of incidence of sound arriving at the ears of the audience, then took the measurements back to MIT and analyzed them"

Amar Bose, Inventor

"There was a time when I was wondering about this business of going public, so I visited about a half-dozen companies in the Boston area, all of them formed by MIT faculty and all had gone public"

Amar Bose, Inventor

"Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru"

Tracy Kidder, Author

"Boston is known for its innovation"

Thomas Menino, Politician

"I was also the romantic lead in The Boston Strangler - I was the only one that lived to tell the story - so I called myself the romantic lead"

Sally Kellerman, Actress

"I'd like to think that the nature of the two teams - Boston being a championship team over the years and the Lakers, same thing - was a lot bigger than Larry Bird or Magic Johnson"

Oscar Robertson, Athlete

"I had never been to the playoffs, and it was exciting. The fans went through the roof. They were excited about the whole team. It was great to be traded to a city like Chicago, which was a lot like Boston"

Dennis Eckersley, Athlete

"Boston is the engine of the state's economy"

Thomas Menino, Politician

"Was the crew well? Was I not? I had profited in many ways by the voyage. I had even gained flesh, and actually weighed a pound more than when I sailed from Boston"

Joshua Slocum, Explorer

"I was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 16, 1923, the only child of Joel and Sylvia Miller"

Merton Miller, Economist

"In Massachusetts, scientists have created the first human clone. The bad thing is that in thirty years, the clone will still be depressed because the Boston Red Sox will still have not won a World Series"

Craig Kilborn, Entertainer

"They played Boston. They played at the Boston Tea Party and through an amazing chain of events I got to hang out with them backstage even though I was underage"

Jonathan Richman, Musician

"I resent the fact that people in places like Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco believe that they should be able to tell us how to live our lives, operate our businesses, and what to do with the land that we love and cherish"

Wilford Brimley, Actor

"I watched Gretzky, I watched Lemieux. Maybe it's the time when you're playing, but for a kid coming into the league, you play the Boston Bruins and you just watched Bobby Orr"

Marcel Dionne, Athlete

"There are some cities that I did take time out to study, 'cause I love history and one of them was Boston, and of course Rome and all of those places like that. But, in Syracuse or Rochester, or any of those places, no"

Connie Francis, Musician

"I'm a kid from Boston"

Rob Mariano, Celebrity

"When I was to come to Washington the first time as Music Director of the Boston Symphony, Mrs. Johnson phoned us to find out if they could give us a party and who we would like to meet"

Erich Leinsdorf, Celebrity

"Our situation here, without any exaggeration, is beyond description almost; it is such as eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it ever entered into the heart of men to conceive Boston ever to arrive at"

Peter Oliver, Artist

"In Boston they have gone from large autonomous high schools to smaller schools within the same building"

Michael Welch, Actor

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