Best 110 quotes in «detroit quotes» category

[S]tart at the turn of the last century, in 1901, with the celebration of Detroit’s bicentennial. That was the Detroit that came before--before all the racket that attended the making of the modern world, which happened here first and faster than anywhere else on this planet.

Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency. Since 1818, the city had spread out along the river, warehouse by warehouse, factory by factory. Judge Woodward's wheels had been squashed, bisected, pressed into the usual rectangles.

Not long after coming to Detroit, I heard of a museum of machinery in Dearborn which had been set up by Henry Ford but which, at that time, had not acquired its present popularity. The well-to-do people of fashionable Grosse Pointe and the Detroit workers as well ignored Greenfield Village, as this museum area was called. Almost nobody had any use for it, and I found out about it only through hearing people laugh at "old man Ford" for "wasting" millions on his "pile of scrap iron." These gibes excited my curiosity, and I asked my friends how I could arrange a visit and what was the earliest time I might go. "Any time you like," they answered, not troubling to conceal their disdain.

Somehow, the city of promise had become a scrap yard of dreams.

That Detroit ultimately concentrated on automobiles could be traced to one genius, Henry Ford.... But that the necessary human energy for this development existed in Detroit could be proven through its early history.... I told him what I knew of the settlement in Detroit and of the climate, certainly almost the worst in the United States. Only the very strong could survive.... To defeat the conditions imposed by earth and sky at Detroit required intensive labor by energetic men who were not tempted by pleasure and play.

The first thing I encountered on entering the museum was the earliest steam engine built in England. As I walked on, marveling at each successive mechanical wonder, I realized that I was witnessing the history of machinery, as if on parade, from its primitive beginnings to the present day, in all its complex and astounding elaborations. Henry Ford's so-called "pile of scrap iron" was organized not only with scientific clarity but with impeccable, unpretentious good taste. Relics of the times associated with each machine were displayed beside it. To me, Greenfield Village, inside and out, was a visual feast.

The city belongs to the black man. The white man was a convenient target until there were no white men left in Detroit. What used to be black and white is now gray. Whites got the suburbs and everything else. The black machine’s got the city and the black machine’s at war with itself. The spoils go to the one who understands that.

The population began dwindling after silk hats replaced beaver hats in high fashion... collapsing the fur trade, in what would become a familiar pattern for Detroit.

There ain't no haints in Detroit.

The industrial part of Detroit is really the most interesting side, otherwise it’s like the rest of the United States, ugly and stupid.

The BEST revenge is to be fabulous.

Where I grew up, women’s liberation was when you let a chick out of her cage so she could stretch her legs for 15 minutes.

While working in California, I met William Valentiner and Edgar Richardson of the Detroit Institute of Arts. I mentioned a desire which I had to paint a series of murals about the industries of the United States, a series that would constitute a new kind of plastic poem, depicting in color and form the story of each industry and its division of labor. Dr. Valentiner was keenly interested, considering my idea a potential base for a new school of modern art in America, as related to the social structure of American life as the art of the Middle Ages had been related to medieval society.

This was when the aging smokestacks atop the monumental factories began to shut off one by one. There were still plenty left running to keep the air over Detroit filled with that choking industrial aptitude, but you were never far from a hollowed-out factory, massive steel tubes on the roofs pointing up toward the sky with nothing left inside but dust and cobwebs. These giant pillars of concrete and metal now jutted high like extended index fingers from broken and casted hands, pointing toward something they would never touch.

Being here in Detroit, our public education in this city is - it's shocking. And the oversight of it and the oversight of the teachers and the funding is nonexistent, and the priority that's put on it is so low.

By 1946, I knew Detroit was the best hockey city in the Original Six.

A series of rumors about my attitude, as well as derogatory remarks about myself and my family showed me that the personal resentment of the Detroit general manager toward me would make it impossible for me to continue playing hockey in Detroit.

By the end of the 1980s, Seattle had taken on the dangerous lustre of a promised city. The rumour had gone out that if you had failed in Detroit you might yet succeed in Seattle - and that if you'd succeeded in Seoul, you could succeed even better in Seattle... Seattle was the coming place. So I joined the line of hopefuls.

Detroit is saying that the hydrogen vehicle is the vehicle of the future. But it's 15 years from now.

Detroit is a city that really stands out. It's been through a very difficult time. There's been a lot of pain here, and the city, physically, has suffered. You can see it in certain neighborhoods, and there's buildings downtown that have been abandoned.

Detroit is a place where we've had it pretty tough. But there is a generosity here and a well of kindness that goes deep.

Detroit is right now a new Mecca for Hip Hop.

Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell.

Detroit: Cars and rock 'n' roll. Not a bad combo.

Detroit's political leadership is a parasite that has outgrown its host.

Detroit is full of talent.

Detroit's a great music town. If your interaction with it was mainly musical, I'm sure you have a good opinion of the place.

Ever since I've become chairman, there have been profiles of me in People, George, The Washington Post, The Detroit News, and all of them could have been written by the same person

Detroit was kind of a random thing where it was like a chance to be in a rock 'n' roll movie.

Even drunk, I knew any escape plan that involved going to Detroit, Michigan, was a harbinger of doom.

Faygo's like a Detroit thing, and you can't really find it everywhere, but the difference between Faygo Creme Soda and other cream sodas is that it's foamy. Faygo Creme Soda is almost like Sprite, but it's cream soda, so that's ill!

Everything I've done in my career has started in and around Detroit, you know, the metro area and Michigan.

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

Governor Romney supported the bailout of Wall Street and decided not to support the bailout of Detroit.

I am a huge Pistons fan. Those were some of my best times in college, watching the Detroit Pistons.

For me, personally, Detroit is a melting pot for everything. We get the best from the East Coast, West Coast and down South.

I come from Detroit where it's rough and I'm not a smooth talker.

Growing up, I always thought of Detroit as a basketball town because of the Pistons, but everyone says it's really, at its core, a football town.

I care about the children of Detroit.

I grew up in Detroit. I grew up in an environment where you were supposed to be Democrat, where they told you that Republicans were evil people and that they were racist.

I grew up in Ann Arbor, about 25 miles west of Detroit. And when you grow up in that area, you get a healthy dose of Motown automatically.

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit.

I grew up in Hollywood. Saying my name here is like mentioning Ford in Detroit

I know that's blasphemous when you are from Detroit, but I was never a fan of Motown stuff. I don't care for the production much.

I grew up on the West Side - the "near West Side," [in Detroit], as they say - in what would be considered now the inner city.

I love Michigan, to be honest. I don't think I'd live nowhere else. It's cheap! This is Detroit. A little bit of nothing gets you a lot of something.

I'm a son of Detroit. I was born in Detroit.

I just wasn't raised a granola eating, peace love hippie type person. I'm from Michigan and was raised in and around Detroit where it is kind of you get respect and you give respect. That is how I feel.

If Detroit was a watershed concert for me, traveling with Willie Nelson through Texas and Louisiana was a milestone of a different sort.

I'm the 1st black platinum artist in Detroit, solo artist in Detroit.