Quotes by Herb Caen

About Herb Caen:

Herbert Eugene "Herb" Caen was a San Francisco journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, painful puns and offbeat anecdotes—"a continuous love letter to San Francisco"—appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for almost sixty years (excepting a relatively brief defection to the San Francisco Examiner), and made him a household name throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
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

A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn't matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author... if it doesn't sell any papers, it's not a good column. It's a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that'...

Herb Caen

I hope I go to Heaven, and when I do, I'm going to do what every San Franciscan does when he gets there. He looks around and says, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'

Herb Caen

Americans are pragmatic, relatively uncomplicated, hearty and given to broad humor.

Herb Caen

A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.

Herb Caen

A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gaze at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 A.M. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and fog...

Herb Caen

When a place advertises itself as 'World Famous,' you may be sure it isn't.

Herb Caen

I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.

Herb Caen

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

Herb Caen

Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the que...

Herb Caen

San Franciscans have a bond of self-satisfaction bordering on smugness.

Herb Caen

New Yorkers are stuck in a gloomy mucilage of mutual commiseration.

Herb Caen

The world of Manhattan is small and tightly knit, and the man on top retains a certain humility. He knows how far and fast he can fall by looking at the guy across the street. The view from the $250,000 apartment covers a lot of ground, most of it co...

Herb Caen

Old San Francisco - the one so many nostalgics yearn for - had buildings that related well to each other.

Herb Caen

Logic is no answer to passion.

Herb Caen

Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they're too deliberate.

Herb Caen

A city is a state - of mind, of taste, of opportunity. A city is a marketplace - where ideas are traded, opinions clash and eternal conflict may produce eternal truths.

Herb Caen

A city is a crazy concrete jungle whose people at the end of each day somehow make a small step ahead against terrible odds.

Herb Caen

The only way to fight a thing like 50 is to stay au courant if it kills you.

Herb Caen

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

Herb Caen

The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.

Herb Caen

Author Bio

  • NameHerb Caen
  • DescriptionAmerican newspaper columnist
  • BornApril 3, 1916
  • DiedFebruary 2, 1997
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist