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California

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California, here we come. Right back where we started from, California! Here we come! ~ Alex Greenwald

California, officially the State of California, also known as Cali and CA, is a U.S. state located on the western coastline of the continent of North America. It is the most populous U.S. state. It was originally a territory of Mexico but was annexed by the United States at the end the Mexican–American War. California is the third most extensive U.S. state, after Alaska and Texas, and is home to the United States' second- and sixth-largest census statistical areas (Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and San Francisco Bay Area, respectively), and eight of the fifty most populated U.S. cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach, and Oakland). The Californian capital city is Sacramento. Its state government is currently controlled by the Democratic Party and its current governor is Gavin Newsom.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Quotes

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California, knows how to party. ~ Roger Troutman
A state that's untouchable, like Elliot Ness. ~ Andre Romelle Young
Whatever starts in California unfortunately has a tendency to spread. ~ Jimmy Carter
California's like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. ~ Saul Bellow
When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here. ~ Joni Mitchell
There are so many different challenges California has. It's the greatest state in the greatest country in the world. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger
If everybody had an ocean across the U.S.A.,
Then everybody'd be surfin' like Californ-I-A. ~ Chuck Berry and Brian Wilson
It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year. ~ Truman Capote
As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit southern California to observe the future. ~ Alison Lurie
I wish they all could be California girls. ~ Brian Wilson and Mike Love

A

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  • California's a wonderful place to live — if you happen to be an orange.
    • Fred Allen, as reported in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About California (2007), by Steven D. Price, p. viii

B

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  • According to CoreLogic, the median house price in Los Angeles is $456,000. This compares with a median price of $187,000 in Houston. There is a similar story for other cities across the state. I won’t even mention house prices in San Francisco. Higher housing costs are a predictable result of restricting supply; it is far more difficult to arrange a new development in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles or other California population centers than in Texas. Builders will have to meet environmental restrictions and density limits in many areas. The Census Bureau reports that between 1980 and 2010 the number of housing units in Texas increased by 81.9 percent, compared with just 41.3 percent in California.
  • [T]here is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval.
  • California's like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me.
    • Saul Bellow; reported in "Saul Bellow: Treading on the Toes of the Brahmans," interview with Lawrence Grobel in Endangered Species: Writers Talk about Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives [Da Capo, 2001, ISBN ISBN 0-306-81004-2], p. 21

C

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  • It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.
    • Truman Capote; reported in Steven D. Price, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About California (2007), p. viii.
  • Whatever starts in California unfortunately has a tendency to spread.
    • Attributed to Jimmy Carter in a 1977 cabinet meeting; reported in Steven D. Price, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About California (2007), p. viii.
  • California has experienced rapid population growth for most of its history, but that trend has come to an end. California’s population grew by 2.9 percent over the last three years, only slightly above the nation’s 2.4 percent increase. Over the last few decades, millions of Californians have left the Golden State for opportunities elsewhere.

D

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  • California assumed a bitterly unfriendly attitude toward the Chinaman. Already has she driven them from her altars of justice. Already has she stamped them as outcasts and handed them over to popular contempts and vulgar jest. Already are they the constant victims of cruel harshness and brutal violence. Already have our Celtic brothers, never slow to execute the behests of popular prejudice against the weak and defenseless, recognized in the heads of these people, fit targets for their shilalahs. Already, too, are their associations formed in avowed hostility to the Chinese. In all this there is, of course, nothing strange. Repugnance to the presence and influence of foreigners is an ancient feeling among men. It is peculiar to no particular race or nation. It is met with, not only in the conduct of one nation towards another, but in the conduct of the inhabitants of the different parts of the same country, some times of the same city, and even of the same village...
  • “Am I…Are you…Please, is this Heaven or Hell?”
    The old lady and the bowler-hatted man both laughed. His laugh sounded like steam escaping, but hers was throaty and loud, like a much younger, much larger woman.
    “Opinions differ,” the old lady said. “We think of it simply as California.”
    • Andy Duncan, A Diorama of the Infernal Designs (2007) in Rich Horton (ed.), Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008, pp. 124-125

F

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  • This was in January, and we’d just had nearly a month of rain, fog, and wet chill. Then California did what it does several times every winter and for which I always forgive it anything. The rain stopped, the sun came out, the sky turned an unclouded blue, and the temperature went up into the high seventies. Everything was lush from the winter rains and there was no way to distinguish those three or four days from summer, and I walked into town in shirtsleeves.

G

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  • California's hyperdevelopment since the Gold Rush came at the greatest cost to California Indians. The state's prolific growth was built upon a tradition of ethnic cleansing that has been largely hidden from the public.
    • Dina Gilio-Whitaker As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (2019)

H

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I

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J

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  • This was California. You could get LSD fresh made from Stanford. You could sleep on the beach at night with your girlfriend. California has a sense of experimentation and a sense of openness—openness to new possibilities.

K

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  • Perhaps the best way to picture the future contours of high-tech feudalism is to examine the present conditions in its fountainhead, California. Many progressives see the Golden State, and especially Silicon Valley, as the harbringer of a better, greener, more egalitarian future. Yet the reality could not be more different. Rather than being a model of upward mobility, California is a place now dominated by a small class of exceedingly wealthy and well-connected people, resembling the nobility of the Middle Ages or the elites of the Gilded Age.
    • Joel Kotkin, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class (2020), p. 41

L

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  • California is a queer place — in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.
    • D. H. Lawrence, letter (September 24, 1923); published in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton, E. Mansfield, and W. Roberts (1987), vol. 4

M

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  • When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here. It was the heart of the hippie activity, and it was our culture, our generation, expressing itself at its most festive, so it was a real magnet for the young people … with the love-ins and so on.
    • Joni Mitchell, on coming to California in 1969, as quoted in "Joni on Point" in The Los Angeles Times (7 June 2009).
  • The girls as fine as California, speaking of Cali: Check your mack daddy, he got's game, and knocks dames from Redding to the Valley.
    • Sir Mix-a-Lot, "Jump on It" (1996), Return of the Bumpasaurus, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Regent Music Corporation
  • Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks.

N

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  • It is called a genocide. That's what it was... No other way to describe it and that's the way it needs to be described in the history books. And so I'm here to say the following: I'm sorry on behalf of the state of California... It's humbling for me, having believed I was educated, to have been so ignorant of our past, to have been so unaware of how ashamed I should be, as a Californian, 5th generation... I'm sorry that we've had generations of your kids and grandkids, your ancestors, that have had to suffer through indignities, lack of capacity, empathy and understanding...

P

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  • California here we come; right back where we started from. California! Here we come!

R

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  • I'll shimmy a little shimmy I'll fly a little fly. Yeah, we're out there having fun in the warm California sun!

S

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  • There are so many different challenges California has; it's the greatest state in the greatest country in the world. Hasta la vista, baby!
  • “So where are the evil tourists from,” Toby asked. “California?”
    “Another dimensional reality.”
    “That's what I said.”
    • Jack Skillingstead, Life on the Preservation (2006), reprinted in Rich Horton (ed.), Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007, p. 243
  • [the college is] an extraordinary institution that encourages young creatives to find their artistic voices and thrive in a variety of industries and careers.
It is a privilege for our family to give back and support the Class of 2022, and we hope this gift will empower graduates to pursue their passions, contribute to the world, and inspire humanity for years to come.
  • What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.
    • Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography (1937, reprinted 1971), p. 289

T

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  • California love! California, knows how to party. California, knows how to party. In the city, of L-A. In the city of good old Watts. In the city, the city of Compton. We keep it rocking! We keep it rocking!
  • No California gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the east. Only the scum of the population do it; they and their children. They, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.

W

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  • The Senator says the territory of California is three times greater than the average extent of the new States of the Union. Well, Sir, suppose it is. We all know that it has more than three times as many mountains, inaccessible and rocky hills, and sandy wastes, as are possessed by any State of the Union. But how much is there of useful land? how much that may be made to contribute to the support of man and of society? These ought to be the questions. Well, with respect to that, I am sure that everybody has become satisfied that, although California may have a very great sea-board, and a large city or two, yet that the agricultural products of the whole surface now are not, and never will be, equal to one half part of those of the State of Illinois; no, nor yet a fourth, or perhaps a tenth part.
    • Daniel Webster, remarks in the Senate on admitting California into the Union (June 27, 1850); reported in The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (1903), vol. 10, p. 130

Y

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  • This California love, this California bud.
  • [A]nd plenty honey's involved, the sunny Sundays and palm trees, Cali, every day it's just another party, from the valleys all the way to them 8 Mile alleys.
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