Harvey Milk Quotes

If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living.

The city ... is involved in the fight for its life. One of the critical battlegrounds is the struggle to preserve middle class residential neighborhoods.

Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.

If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods.

A community is a group of people who have come together, and they work and they live to try and improve the standard of living and quality of life - and I don't mean money.

I was a little lacking in vision as mayor - I failed to understand the significance that housing and the revitalization of housing means for a city.

You cannot save wonderful towns. You can only save wonderful towns by building new ones.

If we are to succeed, we must recognize that the community redevelopment is not solely the rehabilitation of housing, or putting a mall in the business strips.

The key to truly rebuilding our central city on a vital and sustainable foundation is people.

Let's make Oakland a model city.

I certainly have no regret living in the U.S. The quality of life in Australia is good, but it is bloody good here as well.

What's wrong with Hell's Kitchen? You don't change a neighborhood by changing its name. You change it by building a school.

Rather than think of it as somewhere to run from, the Bronx is somewhere to invest.

I think Giuliani started a trend that Bloomberg continued with rampant gentrification, and I think it's tough because why would any city choose not to do that?

Compton is a much safer Compton than it was in the '80s. People play in parks. People aren't afraid to be out at night.

I used to walk in the burnt up Harlem of the '80s, and I'd look at brownstones that were dilapidated or apartment buildings, thinking 'Whoever designed this and built this did not want it to look like this.' So, I used to visualize one day being able to contribute and build in Harlem.

A lot of cities are making a real effort, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make themselves into a place where life can be pretty good.

Our cities need to change, fast. Tactical Urbanism is a guided tour of solutions created when local people decide they can't wait for politics to catch up before they improve their neighborhoods. This weathervane book deserves a place on any urbanist's bookshelf.

I want to help communities put welfare recipients to work right now, without delay, repairing schools, making their neighborhoods clean and safe, making them shine again. There's lots of work to be done out there. Our cities can find ways to put people to work and bring dignity and strength back to these families.

By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.

We will have a peace dividend to spend on rebuilding America, beginning with our American inner cities. We're going to rebuild them, for once and for all.

Human beings need community. If there are no communities available for constructive ends, there will be destructive, murderous communities... Only the social sector, that is, the nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, can create what we now need, communities for citizens... What the dawning 21st century needs above all is equally explosive growth of the nonprofit social sector in building communities in the newly dominant social environment, the city.

The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods.

If in a city we had six vacant lots available to the youngsters of a certain neighborhood for playing ball, it might be "development" to build houses on the first, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and even the fifth, but when we build houses on the last one, we forget what houses are for.

Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!