Harvey Johnson Quotes

More than a billion people in the world live in slums today, roughly one out of every three inhabitants of cities.

In 2007, the majority of the world’s population – over 3 billion of us – will live in urban areas for the first time in history.

We hold accountable all the pussy-footing Presidential candidates, Democrats, Republicans, independents, who pretend our children and our cities do not exist.

In modern megalopolis the very men who make the city, who clean its streets and shovel its coal and run its subway trains, may be exiled from it when they quit work at night. To-day in New York the average worker simply cannot provide a decent home for himself on the average wage. We have been so victimized by the spirit of the real estate speculator that we have almost forgotten the logical ideal of a city as a pleasant place for common people to live together.

Cities are important because that's where the majority of the world's population lives and an even bigger share of the global economy resides.

The tumultuous populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded.

Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

If you live in poor neighborhoods - I know from living in several poor neighborhoods - the worst supermarkets in the city are in the poorest neighborhoods, where people don't have cars.

The only city people are those born so.

The city's full of people who you just see around.

These New York City streets get colder, I shoulder every burden every disadvantage I've learned to manage. I don't have a gun to brandish. I walk these streets famished.

We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in he'll because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.

It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.

The utter insanity of living in a place like this doesn't occur to the 9,000,000 people who inhabit New York. Except for visits I think I shall not be here any more as a resident.

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.

New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from.

I've had my fill of these city guttersnipes--all that scavenging scum! They're the sort of people, who, if the gates of heaven opened to them, all they'd feel would be a draught.

We should be worrying about if you live in the city you're more likely to have anxiety or mood disorders and to be schizophrenic. More than the problems people have from social media.

A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.

Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.

The fact is in a city like Chicago, for example, unemployment in the black community is around 20 percent for adults, 35 percent for youth, they bail out the banks, public schools, there is a deep divide. We need a plan for reconstruction and redevelopment and I hope that - police are the gatekeepers but behind that gate are these problems of disparities and injustice.

We need to reach the millions who live in cities, the hundreds of thousands in industrial centers, the tens of thousands in medium-sized towns, the thousands in small towns, and the hundreds in villages -- all these at once. Like a volcanic eruption, a spiritual revolution needs to spread through the country, to spur people to crucial decisions. People have to recognize the futility of splitting life up into politics, economics, the humanities, and religion. We must be awakened to a life in which all of these things are completely integrated.

When I am in the city I have the impression that I am in a living room with crystal chandeliers, rugs of velvet, and satin cushions. And when I'm in the favela I have the impression that I'm a useless object, destined to be forever in a garbage dump.

What kind of city are we living in, if we encourage the development or ownership of large, expensive properties for investment and land banking... while people are sleeping on the streets?