Illinois Quotes

1. "If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854."
Author: Abraham Lincoln

2. "Tonight we send a message to our party that here in Illinois, there will be a new generation of Republican leaders and we will fight to provide a better tomorrow for future generations. We've made clear the status quo is no longer acceptable."
Author: Adam Kinzinger

3. "So I think I'm in love with Silent Starla, who isn't all that silent after all. In group she hardly ever talks, and in the cafeteria she just sort of stares off in this dreamy way. She's from Oak Park, Illinois, and when she left my room, she said, "We can go together, but I won't fuck you without a condom. I like your eyes."
Author: Adam Rapp

4. "Illinois then had no legislation providing compensation for accident or disease caused by occupation."
Author: Alice Hamilton

5. "He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri", the little girl continued. "I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It's not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees."
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

6. "Illinois preschoolers were temporarily saved from the debilitating effects of cereal and milk."
Author: Barack Obama

7. "I am committed to working with Speaker Hastert and the other members of the Illinois congressional delegation to do all that I can to ensure that Illinois' funding needs are adequately met."
Author: Bill Lipinski

8. "My grandfather and dad worked at General American Transportation Corp. in Chicago, a company that made tank cars and freight cars. We had a pragmatic, Republican, manufacturing, Illinois consciousness as far as employment went."
Author: Bill Moseley

9. "If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild Illinois and Indiana and if we can do Baghdad, we can do Baltimore."
Author: Carol Moseley Braun

10. "Merit," Catcher said, sitting beside Mallory on the couch, an arm around her shoulders. "It's nice to see you clothed again.""And now that she is," Gabriel said, standing, "we should get moving.""Where are we going, exactly?" Catcher asked."To a land beyond space and time," Jeff said drawing an arc in the air. "Where the rules of mortals have no meaning."Gabriel looked up at the ceiling as if he might find patience there. "We're going to the Brecks' backyard. Into the woods, right here in Illinois, where most of us are quite mortal.""Illi-noise," Jeff said with cheeky enthusiasm. "Because the wolves will howl."
Author: Chloe Neill

11. "I was nerdy girl who went to Catholic school and wanted to be an engineer. I was all set to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology. And then I took a hard left turn and studied Liberal Arts at Northern Illinois University, majored in Communications. Then worked in radio as a disk jockey and as the weather girl."
Author: Cindy Morgan

12. "Where gays and lesbians are the best organized and most concentrated in numbers are states that President Clinton must carry in order to be reelected in 1996. Among the states are California, New York, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois."
Author: David Mixner

13. "Our party is a diverse one, as is my home state of Illinois."
Author: Dick Durbin

14. "Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."
Author: George Ryan

15. "Miles Davis, his parents migrated from Arkansas to Illinois, where he had the luxury of being able to practice for hours upon hours. He never would have been able to do that in the cotton country of Arkansas."
Author: Isabel Wilkerson

16. "Illinois makes silent noise.?Loudoun County, however, has some of the highest decibel levels ever recorded by the Quiet Factory, since the political mouths in DC put them out of the whoopee cushion business."
Author: Jarod Kintz

17. "A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick, readily available tool for an ordinary citizen to gather information on his own. In 1960, communication was a one-way street, and information was fundamentally inaccessible. The whole idea of summoning up data or reaching thousands of individuals with the touch of a finger was a science-fiction fantasy."
Author: Jeff Greenfield

18. "Almost 70 percent of U.S. ag exports travel the upper Mississippi River and the Illinois waterway system."
Author: Jerry Costello

19. "Train service is particularly vital for the students and employees of Southern Illinois University."
Author: Jerry Costello

20. "Amtrak is extremely important to the economy of Southern Illinois and I will continue to work with state and local leaders and my colleagues in Congress to secure the necessary funding to maintain full service."
Author: Jerry Costello

21. "I love the Midwest. I think about it every day. I wonder if I would rather have a little farm in the Midwest, in Illinois or Wisconsin, or would I rather have like a little getaway up in the mountains of Colorado."
Author: Joe Lando

22. "Latro, California: "Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!" "Take these pills and come back in three days if you're not better."Parkington, Texas: "Terrible diarrhea..." "Take these pills..."Hainesport, Louisiana: "Terrible..." "Take..."Baker Bay, Florida...Washington, DC...Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...New York, New York...Boston, Massachusetts...Chicago, Illinois: "Doctor, I know it's Sunday, but the kid's in such a terrible state - you've got to help me!" "Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye."EVERYWHERE, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size to take a baby dead from acute infantile enteritis."
Author: John Brunner

23. "Illinois corn farmers are the Nation's number two exporter of feed grains."
Author: John Shimkus

24. "But, also, before I even go on the Medicare prescription drug debate, I always tell the folks in rural Illinois, and I represent 30 counties south of Springfield down to Indiana and Kentucky, that in this bill is the best rural package for hospitals ever passed."
Author: John Shimkus

25. "Nitrogen fertilizer is used on all crops produced in this country, but it is a key plant nutrient to produce corn a critical crop to Illinois farmers."
Author: John Shimkus

26. "You and Raquel should lead the attack against the IPCA facility. Where is it? Iceland? Siberia?""Illinoise," Raquel answered. "Normal, Illinoise, a couple of hours outside Chicago."I snorted. "Finally, IPCA gets a sense of humor."
Author: Kiersten White

27. "My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get."
Author: Laurie Metcalf

28. "I was living in Evanston, Illinois and I was taking theater classes down the street, and our theater school was kind of affiliated with an agency, and so I went on one audition for whatever that movie was, 'My Stepmother is an Alien' or whatever it was, and 'Roseanne' was my second audition."
Author: Lecy Goranson

29. "Human Rights Watch: "Nationwide, the rate of drug admissions to state prison for black men is thirteen times greater than the rate for white men. In ten states black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at rates that are 26 to 57 times greater than those of white men in the same state. In Illinois, for example, the state with the highest rate of black male drug offender admissions to prison, a black man is 57 times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than a white man."
Author: Malcolm Gladwell

30. "Abraham Lincoln, a predecessor of Barack Obama in both the White House and the Illinois state legislature, had eighteen months of formal education and became a soldier, surveyor, postmaster, rail-splitter, tavern keeper, and self-taught prairie lawyer. Obama went to Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School, and became a "community organizer." I'm not sure that's progress--and it's certainly not "sustainable."
Author: Mark Steyn

31. "Many seventh graders I know in Illinois, as well as around the Nation, are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it."
Author: Melissa Bean

32. "It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois."
Author: Neil Gaiman

33. "I grew up among farmers in Illinois and so you always have to have the tools you might need in the eventuality of a flat tire or a broken window."
Author: Nick Offerman

34. "My uncles, who are farmers in Minooka, Illinois - I grew up with them and their pickup trucks and mustaches, and to me that was masculinity: big hairy sweaty guys who could pick up a bus."
Author: Nick Offerman

35. "Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, "I found it! I found it!" The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was."
Author: Peter S. Beagle

36. "And this disease was called The Loneliness, because when you saw your home town dwindle to the size of your fist and then lemon-size and then pin-size and vanish in the fire-wake, you felt you had never been born, there was no town, you were nowhere, with space all around, nothing familiar, only other strange men. And when the state of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, or Montana vanished into cloud seas, and, doubly, when the United States shrank to a misted island and the entire planet Earth became a muddy baseball tossed away, then you were alone, wandering in the meadows of space, on your way to a place you couldn't imagine."
Author: Ray Bradbury

37. "I've had our paper's gossip column since last month. It is egalitarian. I look for people who are quite obscure, and report who is breaking up with whom and where they go and what they wear. The person who invented this new form for us is on antidepressants now. He lives in Illinois. He says there are people in southern Illinois who have not yet been covered by the press."
Author: Renata Adler

38. "The people that I represent in Illinois care passionately about protecting open space and safeguarding our nation's natural treasures, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Author: Robert Dold

39. "Let's put aside the politics and trust the people. Let's embrace the unique opportunity we all have; take the heat and make the hard and difficult decisions, knowing that we're doing it to make things better for the people of Illinois."
Author: Rod Blagojevich

40. "I grew up in Glen Ellyn, which is about 20 miles west of Chicago. I attended Glenbard South High School and University of Illinois. I didn't study acting until I moved to Los Angeles after college, but the fact that I was raised in the Chicago area set the stage for all of my comedic and acting sensibilities."
Author: Ryan McPartlin

41. "I was born in 1970 in Illinois, but all the life I remember I've spent in Chapel Hill, N.C."
Author: Sarah Dessen

42. "Five states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina - have been identified by the EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks - stacks over 500 feet - were operating in the United States: needles injecting poison into the atmosphere."
Author: Sheldon Whitehouse

43. "I think I started realizing I was losing my hair when I was in Illinois. And it was traumatic. It was not something I had figured on in my life."
Author: Stephen Tobolowsky

44. "When did my house turn into a hangout for every grossly overpaid, terminally pampered professional football player in northern Illinois?""We like it here," Jason said. "It reminds us of home.""Plus, no women around." Leandro Collins, the Bears' first-string tight end emerged from the office munching on a bag of chips. "There's times when you need a rest from the ladies."Annabelle shot out her arm and smacked him in the side of the head. "Don't forget who you're talking to."Leandro had a short fuse, and he'd been known to take out a ref here and there when he didn't like a call, but the tight end merely rubbed the side of his head and grimaced. "Just like my mama.""Mine, too," Tremaine said with happy nod.Annabelle spun on Heath. "Their mother! I'm thirty-one years old, and I remind them of their mothers.""You act like my mother," Sean pointed out, unwisely as it transpired, because he got a swat in the head next."
Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips

45. "I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders."
Author: Tom Morello

46. "'Killer Joe' was originally written in 1991 and first produced in '93 at the Next Theater's Lab - a 40 seat black box theater in Evanston, Illinois - back when I was getting started. I was just 25 and I had been acting for awhile, but it was my first play and the one that really got me noticed, especially by Steppenwolf."
Author: Tracy Letts

47. "Things like this don't happen back in Libertyville, Illinois. You don't get lost in the woods behind your house.You don't get trapped inside a fortress-like wall ten feet tall."
Author: Travis Thrasher

48. "I, Amanda Marie Ritter, of Peoria, Illinois, give my consent to the following procedures: • The "genetic healing" procedure, as defined by the Bureau of Genetic Welfare: "a genetic engineering procedure designed to correct the genes specified as ‘damaged' on page three of this form."
Author: Veronica Roth

49. "I refer to what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explaining one's crime would be tantamount to explaining away his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not a free and responsible human being but a machine to be repaired. Even criminals themselves abhor this treatment and prefer to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serving his sentence in an Illinois penitentiary I received a letter in which he deplored that 'the criminal never has a chance to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to choose from. Society is blamed and in many instances the blame is put on the victim."
Author: Viktor E. Frankl

50. "All great athletes essentially come to a fork in the road where they have to change their approach to succeed. It's a sign of intelligence and character. My college coach, Jack Hartman, made me play only defense for a full year in practice when I became academically ineligible for my junior year at Southern Illinois. Embarrassed, I thought at first about arguing with Coach Hartman over what I felt was a tremendous slight. But instead I started lifting weights and working so hard on my defense that my teammates hated to see me match up against them in practice. That was the turning point of my life, on and off the court."
Author: Walt Frazier

Illinois Quotes Pictures