Quotes about street
page 2

Josh Waitzkin photo
Suman Pokhrel photo

“Lampposts look
in the glow of their defeated light
robbed by the fog
but cannot tell
if the streets
lying by stretching limbs in courtyards
are sleeping face downwards or supine.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> In Midnight Street http://www.prachyareview.com/poems-by-suman-pokhrel/</span>
From Poetry

Edwin Lefèvre photo

“History repeats itself all the time on Wall Street.”

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter XVIII, p. 217

Barack Obama photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Bertrand Russell photo
James Baldwin photo
Suman Pokhrel photo

“Haunted trees
covered behind the curtains of their own leaves
stare at the dark
from the fringe of streets.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> In Midnight Street http://www.prachyareview.com/poems-by-suman-pokhrel/</span>
From Poetry

Tupac Shakur photo

“It's a constant man-ego-check going on in the streets, in this world.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Ed Gordon interview (1994)

Barack Obama photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Small business is the gateway to opportunity for those who want a piece of the American dream. […] Well, wouldn't it be nice to hear a little more about the forgotten heroes of America-those who create most of our new jobs, like the owners of stores down the street; the faithfuls who support our churches, synagogues, schools, and communities; the brave men and women everywhere who produce our goods, feed a hungry world, and keep our families warm while they invest in the future to build a better America? That's where miracles are made, not in Washington, D. C.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Ronald Reagan: "Remarks at the National Conference of the National Federation of Independent Business ," June 22, 1983. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=41504
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Thomas De Quincey photo
W.B. Yeats photo
Barack Obama photo

“But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their world-view in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.
That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop, or the beauty shop, or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failing. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Jeffrey Epstein photo
Thomas Traherne photo
Smedley D. Butler photo
Malcolm X photo
Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo
Saul Bellow photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that he is still not quite out of things. But it was also pure patriotic joy that my country at such a time should have found such a leader. The furnace of war has smelted out all base metals from him.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

On his meeting with Winston Churchill, quoted in Harold Nicolson's diary (21 July 1943), Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters. 1939-1945 (London: Collins, 1967), p. 286.
1940s

Ronald Reagan photo
Mikhail Baryshnikov photo
Karl Dönitz photo

“I read sometime around 1938 of Jewish fines and some street actions against them. But I was too concerned with U-Boats and the naval problems to be concerned about Jews.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

To Leon Goldensohn, May 2, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

Gabriel Iglesias photo

“Three years ago, I bought a Beetle, not even thinking. [Audience laughs some] That's not the joke, shut up. See? I can't even tell you guys a story. [mocking laugh] I wasn't thinking, I bought the car, because it was affordable, economical, brand-new freakin' Beetle for like $17,000. I was, like, "AHHH!" First new car, you know? I go to show it off at my friend Martin's house. I thought it was nice. I pull up, like, [Imitates car driving, then brakes screeching] "MARTEEEEEEEEEEEEN!" He lives in the 'hood, I don't get out of the car. Across the street, there are these gang members, the kind of gang members that, they don't get into like shooting people and stuff like that, they just sit on the porch and talk a lot of smack. So I'm there in a Beetle and across the street, I hear this. I was like, "MARTEEEEEEN!" Over here, I hear, "Oralé!" [Looks behind] "Hey, what's up guys, hows it going?" "How did you get in there, esé?" [Gives an frustrated look] "HURRY UP, MARTIN!" 2 months later, I go back to pick him up. Now, I've had some time to work on the car. I put some rims on it, some stickers on it, I put a chip in the motor that makes it go faster. I thought I was bad, right? So I pull up, [Imitates car driving, tires screeching, and the motor revving] "MARTEEEEEN!" [Gesturing to the voice behind him] "Orale!" [Gabriel shakes his head] Uh-uh, I'm not turning around. "Hey!" Mmm-mm. "Hey!" I don't see you! "Yoo-hoo!" [Growls and turns around] "EH!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

WHAT?! "Check it out, eh, it's the Fat and the Furious!"
Hot & Fluffy (2007)

Johan Cruyff photo

“Football is now all about money. There are problems with the values within the game. And this is sad because football is the most beautiful game. We can play it in the street. We can play it everywhere. Everyone can play it but those values are being lost. We have to bring them back.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

In an interview with The Guardian's Donald McRae in September 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/sep/12/johan-cruyff-louis-van-gaal-manchester-united.

Kurt Vonnegut photo
Kenzaburō Ōe photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Bertrand Russell photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous—that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't. It makes no difference how well they mean or how cordial they are—they simply get on my nerves unless they chance to represent a peculiarly similar combination of tastes, experiences, and heritages; as, for instance, Belknap chances to do... Therefore it may be taken as axiomatic that the people of a place matter absolutely nothing to me except as components of the general landscape and scenery. Let me have normal American faces in the streets to give the aspect of home and a white man's country, and I ask no more of featherless bipeds. My life lies not among people but among scenes—my local affections are not personal, but topographical and architectural. No one in Providence—family aside—has any especial bond of interest with me, but for that matter no one in Cambridge or anywhere else has, either. The question is that of which roofs and chimneys and doorways and trees and street vistas I love the best; which hills and woods, which roads and meadows, which farmhouses and views of distant white steeples in green valleys. I am always an outsider—to all scenes and all people—but outsiders have their sentimental preferences in visual environment. I will be dogmatic only to the extent of saying that it is New England I must have—in some form or other. Providence is part of me—I am Providence—but as I review the new impressions which have impinged upon me since birth, I think the greatest single emotion—and the most permanent one as concerns consequences to my inner life and imagination—I have ever experienced was my first sight of Marblehead in the golden glamour of late afternoon under the snow on December 17, 1922. That thrill has lasted as nothing else has—a visible climax and symbol of the lifelong mysterious tie which binds my soul to ancient things and ancient places.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters

Naomi Klein photo
Richard Wagner photo

“Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop; I stared unthinkingly at his piled-up wares, neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen, while another man was just putting his hand in a cage, where he seized a live hen and tore its head off. The hideous scream of the animal, and the pitiful, weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered transfixed my soul with horror. Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of this impression, although I had experienced it often before. It is dreadful to see how our lives—which, on the whole, remain addicted to pleasure—rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruellest misery! This has been so self-evident to me from the very beginning, and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility has increased … I have observed the way in which I am drawn in the [direction of empathy for misery] with a force that inspires me with sympathy, and that everything touches me deeply only insofar as it arouses fellow-feeling in me, i. e. fellow-suffering. I see in this fellow-suffering the most salient feature of my moral being, and presumably it is this that is the well-spring of my art.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, translated by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 422-424 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/wagner02.htm

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I'm a rather bad guide.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

As quoted in Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information (2008) edited by Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec, p. 140
Attributed from posthumous publications

Barack Obama photo
Karl Marx photo

“But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 6, pg. 479.
(Buch I) (1867)

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Kabir photo

“A diamond was laying in the street covered with dirt. Many fools passed by. Someone who knew diamonds picked it up.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Sakhi, 171; translation by Yashwant K. Malaiya based on that of Puran Sahib.
Bijak

Babur photo
Martin Luther photo

“And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, “If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it.” That is, “After the devil himself, there is no worse folk than the pope and his followers.””

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Against the Roman Papacy, An Institution of the Devil ( Wider das Papstum zu Rom vom Teuffel Gestifft, A. D. 1545) http://books.google.com/books?id=GLAMHQAACAAJ&dq=luther+1545+%22+das+papstum+%22&lr=

Barack Obama photo
Subcomandante Marcos photo
Clandestine Culture photo
Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Toni Morrison photo
Mae West photo

“A man in the house is worth two in the street.”

Mae West (1893–1980) American actress and sex symbol

Belle of the Nineties (1934)

John Lennon photo
Pope Francis photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Thomas Paine photo
Jim Carrey photo

“People would be tunneling under the street to avoid you. They'd go "Oh, man — is that happy guy still out there?”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

Jim Carrey's Unnatural Act (1991)
Context: Imagine if you could actually be that happy? That would be powerful, man. People would be tunneling under the street to avoid you. They'd go "Oh, man — is that happy guy still out there?

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 288-289
Non-Fiction, Letters
Context: About my own attitude toward ethics—I thought I made it plain that I object only to (a) grotesquely disproportionate indignations and enthusiasms, (b) illogical extremes involving a reductio ad absurdum, and (c) the nonsensical notion that "right" and "wrong" involve any principles more mystical and universal than those of immediate expedience (with the individual's own comfort as a criterion) on the other hand. I believe I was careful to specify that I do not advocate vice and crime, but that on the other hand I have a marked distaste for immoral and unlawful acts which contravene the harmonious traditions and standards of beautiful living developed by a culture during its long history. This, however, is not ethics but aesthetics—a distinction which you are almost alone in considering negligible. … So far as I am concerned—I am an aesthete devoted to harmony, and to the extraction of the maximum possible pleasure from life. I find by experience that my chief pleasure is in symbolic identification with the landscape and tradition-stream to which I belong—hence I follow the ancient, simple New England ways of living, and observe the principles of honour expected of a descendant of English gentlemen. It is pride and beauty-sense, plus the automatic instincts of generations trained in certain conduct-patterns, which determine my conduct from day to day. But this is not ethics, because the same compulsions and preferences apply, with me, to things wholly outside the ethical zone. For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing—it is all a matter of harmony and good taste—whereas the ethical or "righteous" man would be horrified by dishonesty yet tolerant of course personal ways. If I were farming in your district I certainly would assist my neighbours—both as a means of promoting my standing in the community, and because it is good taste to be generous and accommodating. Likewise with the matter of treating the pupils in a school class. But this would not be through any sense of inner compulsion based on principles dissociated from my personal welfare and from the principle of beauty. It would be for the same reason that I would not dress eccentrically or use vulgar language. Pure aesthetics, aside from the personal-benefit element; and concerned with emotions of pleasure versus disgust rather than of approval versus indignation.

Clandestine Culture photo

“This freedom is what makes Street Art unique”

Clandestine Culture (1970) American artist

http://artdistricts.com/clandestine-culture-between-street-art-and-social-activism/
Context: I can find inspiration from the Renaissance to the contemporary artists, but definitely the most influential movement in my career has been Street Art. The importance of Street Art comes from the fact that this art is available to everyone anywhere, is made from any media using any technique. Street Art lets you do whatever you want in the way you want and do it without asking anybody. This freedom is what makes Street Art unique.

Gloria Steinem photo

“The Arab Spring did a great deal for women because the person who spread the word in the first place was a woman. Women participated in it; they were fully out there in the street.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: The Arab Spring did a great deal for women because the person who spread the word in the first place was a woman. Women participated in it; they were fully out there in the street. Nawal El Saadawi is a founding figure of Egyptian and Middle Eastern feminism who wrote a book opposing female genital mutilation (of which she is a victim). She’s been banned. She’s been in prison. She’s now in her eighties and during the Arab Spring she was like the wise woman of Liberation Square, sitting in the middle of it as young women and young men came to her for instruction, for blessings, and so on.
But it’s very often the case with revolutionary moments that women are present but then they’re drummed out of it afterwards.

W.B. Yeats photo

“While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.”

Source: The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/, IV
Context: My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

David Hilbert photo

“A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street.”

Eine mathematische Theorie ist nicht eher als vollkommen anzusehen, als bis du sie so klar gemacht hast, daß du sie dem ersten Manne erklären könntest, den du auf der Straße triffst.
Mathematical Problems (1900)
Context: An old French mathematician said: A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.

Zakir Naik photo
Upton Sinclair photo
James Eastland photo

“I would not be surprised if Martin Luther King and these agitators next desecrate the graves of Confederate soldiers and drag their remains through the streets in an effort to garner headlines. And what kind of person is participating in this march? Beatniks, frauds, and persons wanted to answer for crimes in other States.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

To the Senate about the Grenada, Mississippi civil rights movement, after activists put American flags on the place where a Confederate memorial stood. June 16, 1966
Congressional Records https://books.google.fr/books?id=TqUs5UlIPaUC&q=%22And+what+kind+of+person+is+participating+in+this%22&dq=%22And+what+kind+of+person+is+participating+in+this%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw8NC1sb3kAhUgDmMBHbF7BogQ6AEIKzAA%7C
1960s

Clandestine Culture photo

“I can find inspiration from the Renaissance to the contemporary artists, but definitely the most influential movement in my career has been Street Art.”

Clandestine Culture (1970) American artist

The importance of Street Art comes from the fact that this art is available to everyone anywhere, is made from any media using any technique. Street Art lets you do whatever you want in the way you want and do it without asking anybody. This freedom is what makes Street Art unique.
http://artdistricts.com/clandestine-culture-between-street-art-and-social-activism/

Tennessee Williams photo
Virginia Woolf photo
John Lennon photo

“What would you suggest I do? Give everything away and walk the streets? The Buddhist says, "Get rid of the possessions of the mind."”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Walking away from all the money would not accomplish that. It's like the Beatles. I couldn't walk away from the Beatles. That's one possession that's still tagging along, right?
Playboy interview (1980)

Henry Miller photo
Bobby Sands photo

“In the gutters lies the black man, dead,
And where oil flows blackest, the streets run red,
And there was He who was born and came to be,
Who lived and died without liberty”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

"Modern Times"
Poetry, Miscellaneous poems

Eckhart Tolle photo
David Belle photo

“Down there we know, the streets we know, but up here? Nobody's been here.”

David Belle (1973) French actor

—TFI a French channel http://youtube.com/watch?v=cBapQdXxGKg

Tupac Shakur photo

“What I want you to take seriously, is what we have to do for the youth. Because we're coming up in a totally different world. This is not the same world that you had this is not 6th Street its not. You grew up, we grew up B. C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? We did not grow up without parents. You had parents that told you this and that and told you what went on back in the day. You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product. You understand what I'm saying? So that means it's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of "these children". It hurts that I got to, it bothers me, not hurts, that I have to sidestep my youth to stand up and do some shit that somebody else is suppose to be doing. You understand what I'm saying? There's too many men out here for me to be doing this, because it ain't my turn yet. I'm supposed to be following behind him getting the knowledge. I don't even got a chance to get the fucking knowledge. I can't go to college. There's too much problems out here. I don't got the money. Nobody does. You understand what I'm saying? So what I'm saying is, it's not as easy as we're mapping it out to be. We've got to stay real. Before we can be new African we've gotta be black first. You understand? We've gotta get our brothers from the streets like Harriett Tubman did. Why can't we look at that and see exactly what she was doing? Like Malcolm did, the real Malcolm, before the Nation of Islam. You've got to remember, this was a pimp. You know what I'm saying, we forgot about all that. In our strive to be enlightened we forgot about all our brothers in the street, about all our dope dealers, our pushers and our pimps, and that's who's teaching the new generation, because y'all not doing it. I'm sorry. But, it's the pimps and pushers who's teaching us. So, if you got a problem with how we were raised, its because they was the only ones who could do it. They the only ones who did it, because everybody else wanted to go to college, and you know, yeah everything's changed, they were the ones telling you 'the white man ain't shit, there you go, check this out young blood, you take this product, you switch it, you get money and that's how you beat the white man, you get money, you get the hell up out of here.'”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Nobody else did that. So I don't wanna hear shit about nobody telling me who I can't love and respect until you start doing what they did. To me, this is Mecca. This is the black family. You know what I'm saying? But, what makes it that much sadder, what makes me wanna cry, is that when I leave this place, so does Mecca. You understand what I'm saying? We're going back to the real deal. Right out there, you're going see the same sisters and Brenda, they're right out there, and y'all are going to get in your cars and drive the fuck home.
1990s, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Atlanta (1992)

Emmeline Pankhurst photo
Dolores Ibárruri photo
Markus Zusak photo
Augusten Burroughs photo
Anatole France photo

“In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
Le Lys Rouge http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Lys_rouge/VII [The Red Lily] (1894), ch. 7
Variant: The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Irvine Welsh photo

“Everything in the street today seems soft focus.”

Source: Trainspotting

Victor Hugo photo

“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”

Variant: I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
Source: Les Misérables

Sarah Dessen photo
Patricia Highsmith photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“You can’t become a billionaire stepping over children sleeping on the street.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Source: The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class

Daniel Handler photo
Dr. Seuss photo
James Patterson photo
Ian McEwan photo
Bill Cosby photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Miranda July photo
Bob Dylan photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Richelle Mead photo