Top 41 Quotes & Sayings by Herb Caen

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American journalist Herb Caen.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

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

American - Journalist | April 3, 1916 - February 1, 1997

Source: Wikipedia

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

Herb Caen

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's the whole thing.

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

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

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 condemned.

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 question has to be positively negative.

Herb Caen

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

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

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

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

Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.

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

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

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

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

Herb Caen

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

Herb Caen

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

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

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

Herb Caen

A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.

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 foghorns speak in dark grays. San Francisco is such a city.

Herb Caen

The clock doesn't matter in baseball. Time stands still or moves backwards. Theoretically, one game could go on forever. Some seem to.

Herb Caen

God! I loove this city!

Herb Caen

The precise location of heaven on earth has never been established but it may very well be right here

Herb Caen

We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.

Herb Caen

The clock doesn?t matter in baseball.

Herb Caen

There are a thousand viewpoints in the viewtiful city.

Herb Caen

It is better to have loved and lost, but only if you have a good attorney.

Herb Caen

Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough, and three is too many.

Herb Caen

The waterfront without the Ferry Tower would be like a birthday cake without a candle.

Herb Caen

San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.

Herb Caen

Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?

Herb Caen

We (San Francisco) have football weather during baseball season, and baseball weather during football season.

Herb Caen

You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding hundred dollar bills.

Herb Caen

I sometimes worry about my short attention span, but not for long.

Herb Caen

Best trumpet: Mike Vax, an alumnus of the Kenton Band, who plays every style with a bright cutting edge, throwing in bop riffs here and there.

Herb Caen