Top 38 Johannesburg Quotes & Sayings

Explore popular Johannesburg quotes.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Having viewed slum clearance projects in most major cities of the world may I state that you have conceived and created in the Johannesburg townships what is probably the most impressive and adequate resettlement activity in existence.
We lived in a suburb in Johannesburg, which is a massive city of about 8 million people, and my parents would drive me to school every day and over the weekend I would go to the mall and then occasionally on Safari. Pretty normal stuff, apart from the Safari.
Don't raise your voice, improve your argument." [Address at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa, 23 November 2004]
Conditions are always different here in Durban. Especially different from Johannesburg. — © Dale Steyn
Conditions are always different here in Durban. Especially different from Johannesburg.
One time, I got to go play with lion cubs in Johannesburg. It was amazing. But it's difficult when you're on the road. We're always playing tennis, and there's a lot of pressure. So sometimes you don't get to do the things you'd like to do, because the priority is tennis.
I am extremely proud to be a part of the NBA's first game in Africa. Coming from South Sudan and having participated in the Basketball without Borders Africa camps in Johannesburg previously, I am truly honored to be part of this historic event.
Working in South Africa and the people in Johannesburg get under your skin. It stays with you. It's a place I want to take my children back to. It's a place that filled me with great joy and inspiration but also sadness. I think it's one of the most complex places on the planet.
The city of Johannesburg built an app because they are getting so many complaints on Facebook and Twitter about potholes. The app allows you to report a pot hole and take a picture of it. Then, you can actually track the progress in terms of the repair, when it happened.
Now that we have a democracy and you can go back and the airport air is not laden with evil any more, you can actually breathe oxygen when you land in Johannesburg.
In 1985, I joined my mother in a protest against apartheid in which we were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. And she was at President-elect Mandela's side in Johannesburg when he claimed victory in South Africa's first free elections.
Everyone knows Gautam Gambhir is a star who is going to be in Bombay, London, and Johannesburg. He is not going to be available to attend to people of his constituency.
The problems that are arising at Johannesburg International Airport are because of the growth of volume, not because of inefficiencies at the Airport. But, the growth in movement of goods by air means that cargo capacity needs to be improved. And I am quite certain that we will do it.
The popularity of leaders like Mandela was an invitation to counter-attack by the government. Mandela was banned from speaking, from attending gatherings, from leaving Johannesburg, from belonging to any organization.
Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension. Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.
When Elon was 17 and my daughter was 15, they really wanted to move to Canada, where my family is from. I said no, because I wanted to do a Ph.D. in Johannesburg, and I was getting lots of modeling work there. But Elon and I went over to visit, and while I was gone my daughter sold my home and my car and had a big garage sale with all my furniture.
Arthur Ashe had been the first black athlete to play Johannesburg at the time of apartheid.
One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
I grew up in such a musical family, and my dad was the first chair in the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, and my mom was a piano teacher and a painter, so it was kind of a creative environment, and it was kind of in my DNA.
I went to South Africa - Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg - and those were definitely the "I've arrived" shows. Outside of the money, the success, the accolades ... This is a place that we, in urban communities, never dream of. We never dream of Africa. Like, "Damn, this is the motherland." You feel it as soon as you touch down. That moment changed my whole perspective on how to convey my art.
Johannesburg is weird, because half of it is like Los Angeles. It feels like just wealthy parts of L.A. But half of it is severe slummy, something like Rio De Janiero or something. So it's kind of weird, because it's both happening at the same time.
I've played in some spectacularly scenic grounds in Cape Town and Johannesburg, but Papua New Guinea in the Seventies was the most remote place I'd been for my cricketing career.
Nosecond Johannesburg isneededuponthe earth.One is enough.
There's no question that how Johannesburg operates is what made me interested in the idea of wealth discrepancy. 'Elysium' could be a metaphor for just Jo'burg, but it's also a metaphor for the Third World and the First World. And in science fiction, separation of wealth is a really interesting idea to mess with.
This Oscar Pistorius business is interesting. There is this cult of carrying lots of guns and being ready to shoot somebody. There were people I knew had guns and carried them openly around Johannesburg. It is frowned on now to carry a gun, but Pistorius and co. got away with it.
I lived at home and I cycled every morning to the railway station to travel by train to Johannesburg followed by a walk to the University, carrying sandwiches for my lunch and returning in the evening the same way.
My sister-in-law actually lives in Johannesburg with her husband.
I don't like Johannesburg, where I grew up. Everybody lives in 'gated' buildings, is paranoid about crime and is always talking about being mugged. It's not a very joyful place.
Sandy deWitt at TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris in Johannesburg, South Africa, taught me to make a decision and stick with it. Every day we're faced with reasons why we shouldn't do good work: it's too scary, too hard to pull off, there's no time, no money, etc. You have to be brave and commit to your choices in the face of adversity. If you waver, nothing will turn out the way you imagined it.
When I came to Johannesburg from the countryside, I knew nobody, but many strangers were very kind to me. I then was dragged into politics, and then, subsequently, I became a lawyer.
We are sort of not at the level of entertainment that the Western world is. Everything we see on the play in the screen, we read, we take serious. We take that it speaks to me. And so wonderful to see how the Johannesburg, South African audiences will say: What does it say to me? What does it make me feel? Why am I celebrating it?
As a young woman, I attended Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was then not segregated. But I witnessed the weight of apartheid everywhere around me.
I actually think Johannesburg represents the future. My version of what I think the world is going to become looks like Johannesburg. — © Neill Blomkamp
I actually think Johannesburg represents the future. My version of what I think the world is going to become looks like Johannesburg.
I was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, but I live in New York City.
Not many people like Johannesburg, but I love the place.
The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.'
Two of the last four executive editors at the New York Times were Johannesburg bureau chiefs at some point, Bill Keller and Joe Lelyveld. This is a very prestigious post and I was like I don't know 28 years old, which at the Times is very young, I had the temerity to put my hand up for that job. I don't think I slept a single night of those six weeks that I spent in Johannesburg. It was an unbelievable experience, and I think I did okay.
All roads lead to Johannesburg.
In a lot of the really impoverished areas of Johannesburg you see these packets of cheesy puffs which are like 6 feet long and the width of a basketball, and they're transparent and they have like 10,000 cheesy puffs in them, and you can buy that for like 50 cents. It's kind of a weird treat that you'd see people having in the townships.
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