“With all the opulence and splendor of this city, there is very little good breeding to be found. We have been treated with an assiduous respect but I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man, since I came to town. At their entertainments there is no conversation that is agreeable; there is no modesty, no attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast and altogether. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer they will break out upon you again and talk away.”
—JOHN ADAMS
“New York… like London, seems to be a cloacina of all the depravities of human nature.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON (Cloacina was the Roman goddess of cesspools)
“This town has 8,000,000 people, 7,500,000 of ’em are of Israelitish extraction. (400,000 wops and the rest are white people).”
—HARRY TRUMAN
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
—DONALD TRUMP