Chicago Politics Quotes

Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn.

I have been urged by the earnest pleas of thousands of people to enter this race. Therefore, I hereby declare my candidacy for Mayor of Chicago.

I knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans.

Chicago's been under the grip of the corrupt and broken political machine for as long as everybody's memory.

Selling public property is the true Chicago way. Had Mr. Obama not been elected president, the nation's business journals would be falling over one another to praise his city for its daring, market-friendly innovations.

No matter how you rearrange President Obama's inner circle, it still looks, smells and tastes like a rotten Chicago deep-dish pizza.

Politics never takes a holiday in Chicago.

While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for reelection, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago.

Racial politics in Chicago has a long history of being intertwined with the mayor's race, but I'd like to think we're past much of that.

Celebrities in general are pretty democratic, just being in the theater. Plus, I'm from Chicago. But Obama's sensible... he's just a reasonable, sensible human being.

I pledge tonight to be Mayor for all of the people of this city - for one Chicago.

There was a lot of feeling that with an African-American president, life on the South Side of Chicago would be radically different.

We can't have a referendum on every important question. This is a republic, not a democracy. This is Chicago, not California.

Only in Chicago do they care more about who the mayor is than who's president.

Chicago's privatization mania began during Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration, which ran from 1989 to 2011. Under his successor, Rahm Emanuel, the trend has continued apace. For Rahm's investment banker buddies, the trend has been a boon. For citizens? Not so much.

In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it's a sport.

I think if you worked at the community level in Chicago and then a politician on the South Side of Chicago, and worked at the state level, then you're pretty familiar with all the variations of politics in the African American community and criticisms you may get. If you're not familiar with those or you don't have a thick enough skin to take it, then you probably wouldn't have gotten here.

Victimize gun owners, then blame the victims. That's the Chicago Way, and it will never change as long as city bosses are pathological in their hatred of our civil rights.

You're never going to catch me agreeing with anything that Bruce Rauner says, given the things he's done in this state, trying to pit the city of Chicago against the rest of Illinois - I'll never agree with anything Bruce Rauner says.

Contrary to what most people think, there is a Rich Daley under Mayor Daley.

No city embraced privatization more eagerly than Chicago, where I live.

I don't fight the suburban areas or collar counties. I get along with them; they're former Chicagoans anyway.

As it happens, Chicago is the nation's leader in municipal privatization efforts. That's right: The city that conservatives portray as the citadel of the power-grabbing, government-growing left has been selling itself off in pieces for years. It signed a 99-year lease for the Chicago Skyway, a toll road in the city's South Side, back in 2005.

Sen. Obama comes from the old Chicago machine politics and has never taken on the special interests in his party on a major issue ever.

I'm always pleased that I managed to stay out of jail throughout my tenure in Chicago.