Chicago Quotes: Windy City Wisdom

"Hell has been described as a pocket edition of Chicago"

Ashley Montagu, Scientist

"Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt"

Studs Terkel, Journalist

"Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

"Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

"I live and die with the Chicago Cubs"

Sara Paretsky, Author

"I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming"

Sara Paretsky, Author

"We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too"

Quincy Jones, Musician

"The show can go on without me, and probably will, but I want to come back to act in Chicago. My wife and I just bought a condo downtown, and I want to do theater"

William Petersen, Actor

"The last job I applied for was to be a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority in 1957"

Vernon Jordan, Businessman

"Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose"

Nelson Algren, Novelist

"Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it"

Claes Oldenburg, Sculptor

"No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection"

Saul Bellow, Novelist

"Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent"

Dave Barry, Author

"My first day in Chicago, September 4, 1983. I set foot in this city, and just walking down the street, it was like roots, like the motherland. I knew I belonged here"

Oprah Winfrey, Entertainer

"Germany was the cause of Hitler as much as Chicago is responsible for the Chicago Tribune"

Alexander Woollcott, Critic

"My father actually moved out from Chicago just so he could play tennis 365 days a year, so it was - it was a place we played every day. We played before school. We played after school. We woke up. We played tennis. We brushed our teeth in that order"

Andre Agassi, Athlete

"Living in Dallas, I root for the Mavericks and the Stars and the Cowboys, but I've always pulled for the Chicago Cubs. I enjoy watching them play"

Lee Trevino, Athlete

"We have created indoor installations inside museums, like the Wrapped Floor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1968, and not monumental at all by any standards"

Christo, Artist

"We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother"

Quincy Jones, Musician

"While I've lived in L.A. since 1985, I'll always consider Chicago my home town and have much affection for it. My parents and sister still live there so I try to visit as often as I'm able"

Douglas Wood, Writer

"I was born in Chicago and grew up in the suburb of Evanston"

Douglas Wood, Writer

"Theater in Chicago will always be my first love. It started careers for me and about 50 of my friends. We all love coming back. As soon as the TV show is over, I'll be back in Chicago, doing live theater"

William Petersen, Actor

"There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money"

Muddy Waters, Musician

"I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians"

Matt Cameron, Musician

"His last 2 shows in the U.S. were in Chicago and St. Louis. I don't know what made me go on the trip with him, but I'm so very glad I did. They were two of the finest concerts I've ever seen"

Nancy Sinatra, Musician

"You know what they say about Chicago. If you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes"

Ralph Kiner, Athlete

"I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s"

Lionel Hampton, Musician

"May 4th is a particularly memorable day in American history because 84 years to the day before May 4, 1970, there was another demonstration at the Haymarket Square in Chicago"

William Kunstler, Activist

"Hollywood is run by people who sit up in their executive office, who are not connected to Mississippi, Alabama, Chicago, South Carolina. They know nothing about that, they don't go to church, and they make their decisions about what they think is right"

Steve Harvey, Actor

"This is not to be cocky, but, I go over real well at Comic-Con. I've done quite a few Comic-Cons, and I enjoy the hell out of them. They are so much fun, and so bizarre. I've done the FX Show in Florida, Wizard-World in Chicago, Comic-Con in San Diego, Wonder-Con in San Francisco, the Comic-Con in New York, and I've done them numerous times"

Kristen Bell, Actress

"When the government picked companies and gave them monopoly rights to frequencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Chicago, it was picking the winners of the competition; it wasn't setting the terms of the competition"

Robert McChesney, Critic

"Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America"

Charles Edward Merriam, Educator

"I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work"

Michael Douglas, Actor

"Why can't DFW compete like San Francisco does with Oakland, like Miami does with Fort Lauderdale, and like Chicago O'Hare does with Midway?"

John Ensign, Politician

"Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse"

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Poet

"We are proud to have with us the poet lariat of Chicago"

Richard J. Daley, Politician

"I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America"

Sarah Bernhardt, Actress

"I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman"

Carl Sandburg, Poet

"Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years"

Carl Sandburg, Poet

"I would like to run for the mayor of the city of Chicago. That has always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives"

Rahm Emanuel, Politician

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