90+ Best Chicago Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Chicago officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the third-most-populous city in the United States. Inspirational chicago quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.

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Famous Chicago Quotes

Chicago still remains a Mecca of the Midwest- people from both coasts are kind of amazed how good life is in Chicago, and what a good culture we’ve got. You can have a pretty wonderful artistic life and never leave Chicago. – Harold Ramis

Big cities can have big hearts. –Mary Elise Monsell

I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail. – H. L. Mencken

Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First, they were driving through the countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city. –Neil Gaiman

Chicago is a great place because you can experience theatre, film, television, anything and everything, so for an actor it’s exciting. The doors are kind of open. – Charlie Barnette

What is Chicagoness? What is the city made of? Why is it different from any other city? What are the things that are here and only here and compose the here of here? He leaned back in his lawn chair and thought a bit and then he said, The prevalence of the lake. The way the lake is a sea and not a lake. The way the lake shoulders the city. The cutting of wind off the lake and the whirl of snow. –Brian Doyle

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness. – Nelson Algren

Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you. –Nelson Algren

Chicago is where the whole idea of community policing began. It remains the – the best and the most comprehensive approach we have in changing the everyday conditions that breed crime and violence – and then breed mistrust. We have more work to do. We need better training to live up to the values and the principles of community policing. – Rahm Emanuel

Yet once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real. – Nelson Algren

Chicago does not go to the world, the world comes to Chicago! –Peter Orner

Chicago is partly a fairy tale because it’s inside one person’s head, so that part of it’s made up and the rest of it is reality. – Colleen Atwood Quotes

I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America. -Sarah Bernhardt

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring. – Nelson Algren

That weekend the city blushed with a great heat wave but on Monday it rained, cooling the ache in the street’s burn. – Daniel Amory

She knew there was a big Chicago far off, where all the trains ran. –Carl Sandburg

Chicago is a city of contradictions, of private visions haphazardly overlaid and linked together. If the city was unhappy with itself yesterday-and invariably it was-it will reinvent itself today. – Pat Colander

Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world. – Frank Lloyd

It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago. –Dan Quayle

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos. – Ben Hecht

It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time. – Mark Twain

Chicago has so much excellent architecture that they feel obliged to tear some of it down now and then and erect terrible buildings just to help us all appreciate the good stuff. –Audrey Niffenegger

Going to Chicago was like going out of the world. – Muddy Waters

Anywhere in the world you hear a Chicago bluesman play, it’s a Chicago sound born and bred. – Ralph Metcalfe

In Chicago not only your vote counts, but all kinds of other votes-kids, dead folks, and so on. -Dick Gregory

Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago. – Lincoln Steffens

Let me tell your something. I’m from Chicago. I don’t break. – Barack Obama

Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose. – Nelson Algren

Writer’s block? I’ve heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn’t a writer anymore. I’m sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living. – Warren Ellis

I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea. –John Varley

It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time. – Mark Twain

Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it. – Claes Oldenburg

Yet once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real. – Nelson Algren

What a place to put a city, right on the front line of absolute zero. No wonder a cow burned it down. –Mark Helprin

Chicago is incredibly gracious. People here have so much pride. – Giuliana Rancic

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring. – Nelson Algren

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

Chicago is constantly auditioning for the world, determined that one day, on the streets of Barcelona, in Berlin’s cabarets, in the coffee shops of Istanbul, people will know and love us in our multidimensional glory, dream of us the way they dream of San Francisco and New York. – Mary Schmich

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It’s the most theatrically corrupt. -Studs Terkel

Let minnow if you want to spend the day at Lake Michigan!

It is the most perfect presentation of nineteenth-century individualistic industrialism I have ever seen. Chicago is one hoarse cry for discipline. – H. G. Wells

It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history. – Erik Larson

It was Chicago with its World’s Fair which vivified the national desire for civic beauty. – Daniel Burnham

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold. – Erik Larson

Chicago is the Great American City, and it was really great to live there during a time of economic expansion and opportunity and growth. I felt like I was living at the center of the world. Unlike New York, no one expects you to be a professional writer. – John Green

I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail. -H. L. Mencken

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It’s the most theatrically corrupt. – Studs Terkel

Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it. -Claes Oldenburg

Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world. – Frank Lloyd Wright

Let me tell you something. I’m from Chicago. I don’t break. –Barack Obama

One of the hallmarks of Chicago is that we do so many things in an original manner. What other city has made a river flow backwards? What other city makes traffic flow backwards? – Mike Royko

I am an organic Chicagoan. Living there has given me a multiplicity of characters to aspire for. I hope to live there the rest of my days. – Gwendolyn Brooks

The best food is in Chicago. There are great restaurants everywhere, from fancy places to burger joints. – Steve Carell

They do things big, big I tells ya: Mike Ditka big. Michael Jordan big. Bill Murray big. Oprah! It’s one cultural Mount Everest after another. – Anthony Bourdain

One of the problems with people in Chicago, she remembered, was that they were never lonely at the same time. –Lorrie Moore

In Chicago, you have an absence of strong family units, and that absence gets filled by gangs. You have a failure in the school system, after-school programs and other social programs to help keep kids off the streets. Amnesty International speaks to that in some way, by keeping these issues in the forefront. – Lupe Fiasco

I’m impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype. New York is talk. Chicago is work. – Michael Douglas

To be a Cubs fan is both a birthright and a curse. –Jason Diamond

Chicago is one city. We shall work as one people for our common good and our common goals. – Harold Washington

It’s a 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes; it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it! – Elwood & Joliet

We’d speak French like a bunch of high school kids from Chicago, but we’d at least speak French. –Michelle Obama

Chicago is known for good steaks, expensive stores and beautiful architecture. – Bob Barr

I miss everything about Chicago, except January and February. – Gary Cole

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring. –Nelson Algren

Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation. – Eugene V. Debs

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold. –Erik Larson

Chicago seems a big city instead of merely a large place. – A J Liebling

Chicago still remains a Mecca of the Midwest—people from both coasts are kind of amazed how good life is in Chicago, and what a good culture we’ve got. You can have a pretty wonderful artistic life and never leave Chicago. – Harold Ramis

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

Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you. – Nelson Algren

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation. – Jane Byrne

Let me tell your something. I’m from Chicago. I don’t break. – Barack Obama

Chicago still remains a Mecca of the Midwest people from both coasts are kind of amazed how good life is in Chicago, and what a good culture we’ve got. You can have a pretty wonderful artistic life and never leave Chicago. – Harold Ramis

There have been times I have thought some dreams should never be dreamt, but I would hate a world where that was true. – Daniel Amory

Chicago’s neighborhoods have always been the city’s greatest strength. – Jane Byrne

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood. – Norman Mailer

Guys, you’re Chicago. You’re the home of Laurie Metcalf and Jessie Mueller and Steppenwolf. And a million, a million, a million brilliant theater practitioners.— Lin-Manuel Miranda

Chicago is a world-class city filled with amazing people with big ideas. – W. Kamau Bell

Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city. – Neil Gaiman

Chicago’s one of the rare places where architecture is more visible. – Frank Gehry

I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America. – Sarah Bernhardt

The great trains howling from track to track all night. The taut and telegraphic murmur of ten thousand city wires, drawn most cruelly against a city sky. The rush of city waters, beneath the city streets. The passionate passing of the night’s last El. – Nelson Algren

In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it’s a sport. In Chicago not only your vote counts, but all kinds of other votes–kids, dead folks, and so on. – Dick Gregory

Let me tell you something. I’m from Chicago. I don’t break. – Barack Obama

It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago – Dan Quayle

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world. – Erik Larson

It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes; it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses. – Elwood Blues

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning…proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation. –Carl Sandburg

Chicago is not a very fashion-driven place. Nobody says, ‘Oh, you’ve got to come see these fabulous people!’ Nobody cares. – Mike Nichols