San Francisco

Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there? ~ Herb Caen

We began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness of the late afternoon of time. ~ Jack Kerouac

San Francisco is a city in California, one of the top tourist destinations in the US, and the birthplace of a number of cultural movements, including the Summer of Love, Beat Poetry, Gay Liberation, and was central to the Gold Rush. Residents known for commenting on the City include Joshua A. Norton, also known as Emperor Norton, and Herb Caen.

Quotes

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. ~ John Phillips

This gold and white acropolis rising wave on wave against the blue of the Pacific sky was a stunning thing, a painted thing, like a picture of a mediaeval Italian city which can never have existed. ~ John Steinbeck

Alphabetized by author or source

• If I do go to heaven, I'm going to do what every San Franciscan does who goes to heaven. He looks around and says, "It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco."
  • Unknown resident, as quoted in "Words from the heart' in USA Today (16 February 2001), page D4

• Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?
  • Herb Caen, as quoted in The Portable Curmudgeon (1992) by Jon Winokur, p. 174.

• I'd thought it would be something like King's Road [London], only more. Somehow I expected them all to own their own little shops, because I heard they' d all bought out blocks. I expected them all to be nice and clean and friendly and happy.
  • George Harrison expressing disenchantment with the "hideous, spotty little teenagers" he found in the "Summer of Love" hippies of San Francisco's famous “hippie haven” i.e., the Haight-Ashbury district, which he visited on 7 August 1967, as quoted in The Love You Make : An Insider's Story of the Beatles (2002) by Peter Brown, Steven S. Gaines, p. 235

• It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness of the late afternoon of time.
  • Jack Kerouac, in On the Road (1962), Ch. 9

• East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.
  • O. Henry, in "A Municipal Report"

• If I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."
  • Bill O'Reilly, on The Radio Factor (8 November 2005); also quoted at O'Reilly to San Francisco: "If Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. ... You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead" at Media Matters for America (10 November 2005)

• As many of you know, I come from San Francisco. We don't have a lot of farms there. Well, we do have one — it's a mushroom farm, so you know what that means.
  • Nancy Pelosi, to The Agribusiness Club of Washington (24 July 2006) ^{[specific citation needed]}

• If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
  • John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, and sung by Scott McKenzie.

• I was appalled that the San Francisco ethic didn't mushroom and envelope the whole world into this loving community of acid freaks. I was very naive.
  • Grace Slick, as quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) edited by Robert Andrews

• A city on hills has it over flat-land places. . . . This gold and white acropolis rising wave on wave against the blue of the Pacific sky was a stunning thing, a painted thing, like a picture of a mediaeval Italian city which can never have existed.
  • John Steinbeck, in Travels With Charley (1962)

• The Cool, Grey City of Love
  • George Sterling, poem title, in The San Francisco Bulletin, vol. 133, no. 31 (11 December 1920), p. 1

• Say this prayer every night, and if it works, we'll live forever: "Dear Lord, whose mercy's not diminished, let me live till the airport's finished."
  • Mike Zelinsky, as quoted in Herb Caen, as quoted in "What the Cat Dragged In: Aug. 16, 1996" by Herb Caen, in SFGate.com (16 August 1996)