Manchester
Manchester is a city in the North West of England. It had a population of over 589,000 in 2024. It borders the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the city of Salford to the west.
Quotes
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- And on the sixth day God created Manchester
- "Northern Quarter's 'And on the sixth day God created Manchester' mosaic restored", Greater Manchester News (20 Dec 2020)
- This is Manchester, we do things differently here.
- Tony Wilson quoted in "'There's a famous saying about Manchester... but I think it's wrong'", Manchester Evening News (4 Feb 2023)
- Manchester is in the south of the north of England. Its spirit has a contrariness in it – a south and north bound up together – at once untamed and unmetropolitan; at the same time, connected and wordly.
- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
- I had no idea that any of us could play as well as we did on Morning Glory. I hoped we could, but I didn’t know. The whole of the first album is about escape. It’s about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester.
- We like annoying people. It’s a Manchester thing. It’s a trait. We just like pissing people off.
- Noel Gallagher quoted in Oasis: Ruling Asses, Rolling Stone (2 May 1996)
- Manchester has pure life packed into its bare brick warehouses, ironically sunny-themed trams, and even its old railway lines which are now adorned with blooming gardens.
- Manchester’s got everything except a beach.
- Ian Brown quoted in "'Manchester's got everything except a beach'... sorry, but I disagree", Manchester Evening News (17 Jun 2023)
- Factory Records were not just made in the north. They were entirely, fundamentally, immanently of the north. They sounded like the north, and Manchester in particular, made into sound.
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- If it stopped banging on about its football teams and its bands and its shops and its attitude, Manchester has something that it can be genuinely, enormously proud of, something that it should shout from the rooftops.
- Manchester changed the world’s politics: from vegetarianism to feminism to trade unionism to communism, every upstart notion that ever got ideas above its station, every snotty street-fighter of a radical philosophy, was fostered brawling in Manchester’s streets, mills, pubs, churches and debating halls.
- If ever there was one player, anywhere in the world, that was made for Manchester United, it was Cantona. He swaggered in, stuck his chest out, raised his head and surveyed everything as though he were asking: ‘I’m Cantona. How big are you? Are you big enough for me?'
- Alex Ferguson quoted in "Sir Alex Ferguson Named the One Footballer who was 'Made for Man United'", Give Me Sport (8 Aug 2025)
- When the band started we wrote depressing songs. Living in Manchester you couldn’t help but sound like Joy Division, the city had a depressing atmosphere.
- Tim Booth quoted in Legends of Manchester music – in their own words, NME (1 May 2009)
- At Manchester United we strive for perfection and if we fail we might just have to settle for excellence.
- Matt Busby quoted in "Manchester is my Heaven" (6 Sep 2018)
- Manchester kids have the best record collections.
- Tony Wilson quoted in "The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1976-1996", The Independent (7 June 2009)
- A city that thinks a table is for dancing on.
- Mark Radcliffe quoted in Manchester, Part 2, Dublin Buzz (10 Aug 2017)
- Our relationship with other bands in Manchester wasn’t great. We would run into Joy Division but we weren’t really mates. We didn’t mix.
- Steve Hanley quoted in Legends of Manchester music – in their own words, NME (1 May 2009)
- By the 18th century, Manchester had become a global powerhouse. The Bridgewater Canal (1761), the first modern canal in Britain, was hailed as the 'eighth wonder of the world'
- Noel Gallagher: The thing about Manchester is… it all comes from here
- On derby day in Manchester, the city is cut in two. The Blues and the Reds invade the streets, and if your team wins the city belongs to you.
- Eric Cantona quoted in History of Tourism in Manchester, Visit Manchester (21 Sep 2025)
- For Manchester is the place where people do things… ‘Don’t talk about what you are going to do, do it.’ That is the Manchester habit. And in the past through the manifestation of this quality the word Manchester became a synonym for energy and freedom and the right to do and to think without shackles.
- Judge Parry in What the Judge Saw
- Sarcasm is a Manchester trait.
- Peter Hook quoted in Peter Hook Interview (15 April 2006)
- Manchester has its own pride and London has its sort of pride and sometimes we can be a bit mean to each other, but I think if we dig the music we can get on really well
- Graham Coxon quoted in Graham Coxon Interview
- The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, nicknamed Baby, was the first computer to store and run a program from memory, just like most computers today.
- "Meet Baby", Science+Industry Museum
- Over the moor, take me to the moor
Dig a shallow grave and I'll lay me down
Over the moor, take me to the moor
Dig a shallow grave and I'll lay me down
Lesley Anne and your pretty white beads
Oh, John, you'll never be a man
And you'll never see your home again
Oh, Manchester, so much to answer for- Song about the Moors Murderers by The Smiths quoted in "Suffer Little Children, genius.com (20 Feb 1984)
- You arrive at the building to a very minimal sign, then, in the entrance, you pass through doors that had 5 and 1 cut out of them
- It wasn’t your greasy, beer-stained 1970s club, it was a slice of New York in Manchester.
- Making money didn’t seem that relevant. It wasn’t at the forefront of what was important.
- The Hacienda in "The Oral History of Haçienda, One of History’s Most Notorious Nightclubs", Vice (31 Dec 2020)
