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Philadelphia Quotes

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Philadelphia Quotes

“Germantown helped shape my work and practice as a visual storyteller and image maker. But if there is a word I could use to describe what Germantown means to me, I would choose the word home. It was home then, and will always continue to be home for me.”

HomePhotographyPhiladelphiaVisual StorytellingGermantown
Book:Compositions of Black Joy: A Visual Chronicle of the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival
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“The two-story dwellings of this city are, beyond all question, the best, as a system, not only owing to the single family ideas they represent, but because their cost is within the reach of all who desire to own their own homes. They have done more to elevate and to make a better home life than any other known influence. They typify a higher civilization, as well as a truer idea of American home life, and are better, purer, sweeter than any tenement house systems that ever existed. They are what make Philadelphia a city of homes, and command the attention of visitors from every quarter of the globe”

HomeHousingPhiladelphiaHousesRowhomeRowhomes
Author:Frank H. Taylor
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“My first vegetable garden was in a hard-packed dirt driveway in Boulder, Colorado. I was living in a basement apartment there, having jumped at the chance to come out West with a friend in his Volkswagen Bug, fleeing college and inner-city Philadelphia. I was twenty, hungry for experience, and fully intending to be a ski bum in my new life. But it didn’t turn out that way.”

GardeningPhiladelphiaBoulderVolkswagon Bug
Book:Organic Gardener's Companion: Growing Vegetables in the West
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“Red and white wine (TBD) Victory Brewing Company Prima Pilsner Soft pretzel bread/spicy mustard sauce Cheesesteak arancini/homemade marinara sauce Deconstructed pork sandwich: braised pork belly, sautéed broccoli rabe, provolone bread pudding Lemon water ice Commissary carrot cake I'm particularly proud of my riff on the pork sandwich, one of Philadelphia's lesser-known specialties. Everyone presupposes the cheesesteak is Philadelphia's best sandwich, when, in fact, my favorite has always been the roast pork. Juicy, garlicky slices of pork are layered with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone on a fresh roll, the rich juices soaking into the soft bread while the crunchy crust acts like a torpedo shell, keeping everything inside. The flavors explode in your mouth in each bite: the bitter broccoli rabe, the assertive cheese, the combination of garlic and spices and tender pork.”

SandwichesPhiladelphiaPorkFood And WineMenuDeconstructed
Book:The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs
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“To soften relations between the two groups and meet Philadelphia's fashionable young beauties, Arnold hosted a ball at the... City Tavern with a guest list that included Tories and neutralists, as well as patriots. Inevitably the 'disaffected' emerged triumphant, their beaded gowns gleaming in the candlelight, their two-feet--high hairdos towering over the caps of patriot woman in their crude clothes.”

PhiladelphiaBenedict ArnoldTories
Book:Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married
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“It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.”

TraditionNew York CityPhiladelphia
Book:What I Saw in America
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“On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a sponsor and donor of this soon-to-be-opened institution, while an accompanying leaflet has enticing photographs of Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Sandy Koufax, Irving Berlin, Estee Lauder, Barbra Streisand, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. There is something faintly kitsch about this, as there is in the habit of those Jewish papers that annually list Jewish prize-winners from the Nobel to the Oscars. (It is apparently true that the London Jewish Chronicle once reported the result of a footrace under the headline 'Goldstein Fifteenth.') However, I think I may send a contribution. Other small 'races' have come from unpromising and hazardous beginnings to achieve great things—no Roman would have believed that the brutish inhabitants of the British Isles could ever amount to much—and other small 'races,' too, like Gypsies and Armenians, have outlived determined attempts to eradicate and exterminate them. But there is something about the persistence, both of the Jews and their persecutors, that does seem to merit a museum of its own.”

RaceUnited StatesBigotryPhiladelphiaJewsArmeniansAntisemitismBritonsArmenian GenocideAlbert EinsteinRomansGypsiesBob DylanBritish IslesBetty FriedanAmerican JewsBarbra StreisandEstee LauderIrving BerlinIsaac Bashevis SingerSandy Koufax
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Philadelphia Your liberty Bell still rings. Freedom, from Philadelphia Still rings. Freedom rings.... Liberty Rings. This is the heart of the USA, The point where our heart Incarnated. Men gathered here To sign three sacred contracts: First, The Declaration of Independence, Then, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And they said to the world "By God, Let Freedom Ring.”

WisdomAmericaPoetryUsaAmerican HistoryPhiladelphia
Book:The Pursuit of Happiness: A Book of Poems Honoring Our American Values
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“I first tried a cheesesteak spring roll ten years ago at my cousin's wedding at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia, and though I wasn't as unconvinced as Shauna, I had my doubts. That Philadelphians could bastardize a menu item didn't surprise me- this is, after all, the city that invented The Schmitter, a sandwich made of sliced beef, cheese, grilled salami, more cheese, tomatoes, fried onions, more cheese, and some sort of Thousand Island sauce- but the fact that the Four Seasons found it worthy of their fancy-pants menu intrigued me. One bite and I knew I'd struck gold. The cheesy meat and onion filling oozed out of the crisp, fried wonton wrapper, enhancing the celebrated cheesesteak flavor with a sophisticated crunch. This weekend, I'm doing a similar riff, but instead of spring rolls, I'm using arancini, the Sicilian fried risotto balls that are usually stuffed with mozzarella and meat ragu. Instead, I will stuff mine with sautéed chopped beef, provolone, and fried onions and mushrooms. The crispy, saffron-scented rice balls will ooze with unctuous cheesesteak flavor, and I will secure my place among the culinary legends.”

SandwichesPhiladelphiaCheesyMeatsSpring RollsCheesesteakBastardization
Book:The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs
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“I tell them about Philadelphia's Italian neighborhoods and how they gave rise to the famous cheesesteak and lesser-known roast pork sandwich, and about the Pennsylvania Dutch and how they introduced the pretzel to North America. I talk about water ice and The Commissary, Tastykakes, and South Philly, the ongoing cheesesteak rivalry between Pat's and Geno's and my personal preference for Delassandro's Steaks over either one. One diner originally from Chicago jumps in with his own stories about Lou Malnati's pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs, and another from New Haven talks about white clam pizza at Pepe's and burgers at Louis' Lunch.”

ConnectionsChicagoPhiladelphiaCuisineFood Business
Book:The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs
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“Inside an H Mart complex, there will be some kind of food court, an appliance shop, and a pharmacy. Usually, there's a beauty counter where you can buy Korean makeup and skin-care products with snail mucin or caviar oil, or a face mask that vaguely boasts "placenta." (Whose placenta? Who knows?) There will usually be a pseudo-French bakery with weak coffee, bubble tea, and an array of glowing pastries that always look much better than they taste. My local H Mart these days is in Elkins Park, a town northeast of Philadelphia. My routine is to drive in for lunch on the weekends, stock up on groceries for the week, and cook something for dinner with whatever fresh bounty inspires me. The H Mart in Elkins Park has two stories; the grocery is on the first floor and the food court is above it. Upstairs, there is an array of stalls serving different kinds of food. One is dedicated to sushi, one is strictly Chinese. Another is for traditional Korean jjigaes, bubbling soups served in traditional earthenware pots called ttukbaegis, which act as mini cauldrons to ensure that your soup is still bubbling a good ten minutes past arrival. There's a stall for Korean street food that serves up Korean ramen (basically just Shin Cup noodles with an egg cracked in); giant steamed dumplings full of pork and glass noodles housed in a thick, cakelike dough; and tteokbokki, chewy, bite-sized cylindrical rice cakes boiled in a stock with fish cakes, red pepper, and gochujang, a sweet-and-spicy paste that's one of the three mother sauces used in pretty much all Korean dishes. Last, there's my personal favorite: Korean-Chinese fusion, which serves tangsuyuk---a glossy, sweet-and-sour orange pork---seafood noodle soup, fried rice, and black bean noodles.”

PhiladelphiaVendorsPharmacyPlacentaAsian FoodRice CakesSoupsSweet And SourFood CourtH Mart
Book:Crying in H Mart
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“Rough going had been encountered by the Masses in its efforts to remain a medium for free interpretation in a time of hysteria. Because of its pitiless reporting in trying to reveal true causes, its lack of respect for commercialized religion, and its attacks on sex taboos in art and literature, the magazine had earlier been barred from the reading rooms of many libraries, ousted from the subway and elevated news stands in New York, and refused by distributing companies of Boston and Philadelphia; and our right to use the mails in Canada had been revoked by the Dominion government”

New YorkCanadaCensorshipBostonPhiladelphiaThe Masses
Book:Art Young: His Life and Times
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“Whereas Philadelphia was home to the first savings bank established in the United States - Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, in the year 1816 - Philadelphia is also the city that became home to the first commercial bank established in the United States. Thirty-four years before America had its first savings bank - Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, in 1816 - the first commercial bank in the United States was established. This first American commercial bank was also established in the very same city that America’s first savings bank had been created - the city of Philadelphia.”

Philadelphia
Author:Ted Ihde, Thinking About Becoming A Real Estate Developer?
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“However one felt about the Mummers, guys like Franny infused South Philadelphia with a hint of the carnivalesque. Any bulky white man on the street—plumber, roofer, carpenter, cop—might abruptly slide into a swoop or a twirl, buoyant and sleek as a synchronized swimmer. He might prance like a reindeer, lurch like a tyrannosaur, pulse like a rave girl in a festival crowd. He would strut one minute and complain about Mexicans the next.”

PhiladelphiaMummers
Book:Early Sobrieties
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“One day a young man stood at the foot of Shackamaxon Street in Philadelphia, sugar town, 1882. Folded into his vest, a letter of reference. He had an idea that involved a railroad ticket and the millions of dead buffalo out west. If he could get those bones into railroad cars and ship them to Philadelphia, they could be heated in a sealed vessel at 700 degrees Celsius, which was 1292 degrees Fahrenheit, not easy to imagine. The super-heating would drive off the organic matter in the bones, leaving activated carbon, composed of tricalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, and carbon. Bone charcoal. Bone black. Ivory black. Animal charcoal. Abaiser. Pigment black 9. Bone char. Carbo animalis. Buffalo black. This substance could be used to refine crude raw sugar processed from sugarcane, slave sugar, although of course the slave trade had been abolished, then as now, but there still were enslaved people, then as now. Bone char worked better than bull’s blood or egg whites or any other substance to bleach the sugar white. And the bones! The bones were everywhere, he’d heard, littering the ground, so thick that a farmer couldn’t plow without stacking them beside the fields. (197)”

PhiladelphiaBuffalo Bones
Author:Louise Erdrich
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“Consider the Johnson House and the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival in Germantown together as sites of joy, freedom, celebration and resilience in the face of tremendous odds and struggle. Both operate at the intersection of Black protest, Black ritual and Black pomp and circumstance. Together, they embody the legacy and ongoing project of Black liberation, and show us exactly what it looks like in a majority-Black neighborhood in Philadelphia, a northern city that is not only the birthplace of American democracy but has its own complicated history. Together, they connect to Galveston, Texas 5, the birthplace of the Juneteenth holiday and a southern city that is 1,500 miles away.”

American HistoryPhiladelphiaAmerican DemocracyJuneteenthGalvestonGermantownJohnson House Historic Site
Book:Compositions of Black Joy: A Visual Chronicle of the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival
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“Philadelphia's charm extends far beyond its famous cheesesteaks and hoagies; these ten must-visit spots will help you experience the true heart of the City of Brotherly Love. The Betsy Ross House Reading Terminal Market Boat House Row/Kelly Drive National Constitution Center Reading Terminal Market The Liberty Bell Benjamin Franklin Parkway Franklin Institute Philadelphia Museum of Art City Hall and its Observation deck”

PhiladelphiaCity Of Brotherly LoveReading Terminal Market Hoagies
Author:Charmaine J. Forde
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“He had heard especially promising things about Philadelphia--the lively capital of that young nation. It was said to be a city with a good-enough shipping port, central to the eastern coast of the country, filled with pragmatic Quakers, pharmacists, and hardworking farmers. It was rumored to be a place without haughty aristocrats (unlike Boston), and without pleasure-fearing puritans (unlike Connecticut), and without troublesome self-minted feudal princes (unlike Virginia). The city had been founded on the sound principles of religious tolerance, a free press, and good landscaping, by William Penn--a man who grew tree saplings in bathtubs, and who had imagined his metropolis as a great nursery of both plants and ideas. Everyone was welcome in Philadelphia, absolutely everyone--except, of course, the Jews. Hearing all this, Henry suspected Philadelphia to be a vast landscape of unrealized profits, and he aimed to turn the place to his advantage.”

WelcomePhiladelphiaReligious ToleranceFree PressLandscaping
Book:The Signature of All Things
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“VISIONS OF GRANDEUR I'm walking through a sheet of glass instead of the door, Flying over a giant candlestick lighting up Central Park, Repeating two courses at Hard Knock's College, And swimming through the Red Sea with silky jelly fish. I'm hopping over an empty row house in Philadelphia, Getting a seventy dollar manicure on a gondola in Venice, Wearing a white pearl necklace stolen from Goodwill, And running my first New York City marathon. I'm discussing the meaning of life with my late cat Charlie. Dating John Doe- the thirty-third chef at the White House, Running non-stop on a broken leg through a bomb-blasted city, And keeping a multi-lingual monkey named Alfredo as my pet. I'm spying on two hundred and twenty-two homegrown terrorists from Iowa, Worshiped by a red-headed gorilla named Salamander, Sleeping with a giant teddy bear dressed in black leather, And wearing hot pink lipstick over a shade of midnight blue.”

PoetryBlueWhite HouseNew York CityMidnightLeatherGoodwillVenicePhiladelphiaGorillasCentral ParkTerroristsBombMultilingualMonkeyGondolaBomb BlastManicureNew York City MarathonPearl Necklaces
Book:Uninhibited From Lust To Love
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“There's more to Philadelphia than Cheesesteaks and Wawa Hoagies, Here is a list of 1 places you will love in Philadelphia: The Betsy Ross House Reading Terminal Market Boat House Row/Kelly Drive National Constitution Center Delaware River waterfront The Liberty Bell Benjamin Franklin Parkway Franklin Institute Philadelphia Museum of Art City Hall and it's Observation deck”

PhiladelphiaVisitCity HallLiberty BellCheesesteakNational Constitution CenterWawa Hoagie
Author:Charmaine J. Forde
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“While recruiting, Lieutenant Grace was often insulted by such remarks as, "There goes the captain of the Negro Company! He thinks the negroes will fight! They will turn and run at the first sight of the enemy!" His little son was scoffed at in school because his father was raising a negro company to fight the white men.”

Civil WarBlack HistoryRace RelationsPhiladelphiaUs HistoryRace And Racism In AmericaRecruitmentInfantry
Book:History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865
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“Born on January 17, 1706, he inhabited this planet until April 17, 1790. His talents were many and he was known to be a polymath. Being a politician and a “Founding Father of the United States” was just one of what he was known for. An author, printer, inventor and freemason he is known to have invented the Franklin stove and bifocal eye glasses. He published the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Poor Richard’s Almanac. A founder of the University of Pennsylvania he also served as the first United States Ambassador to France and Governor of Pennsylvania. About 20,000 people attended his funeral. He was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia near the fence so that he could be close to where the ladies walked. His wit and sharp mind gave us many of his quotes!”

American HistoryPhiladelphiaSea Stories
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One...."
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“While Geyer was on the German steamship to Rio de Janeiro, his co-workers struggled to cope with intense emotions. The day after forty-five miners died in the Roslyn, Washington, explosion, Philadelphia suffered a tragedy of their own—one that would rock City Hall and its police force to its core.”

TragedyPoliceLaw EnforcementEmotional PainPhiladelphiaCity Hall19th Century America
Book:Detective in the White City: The Real Story of Frank Geyer
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