Liverpool Quotes

"This commercial intercourse of the inhabitants, induces a general harmony and sociability, unclouded by those ceremonies and distinctions that are met with in more polished life; hence the freedom and animation which the town has always been observed to possess"
Moss: Liverpool Guide 1796

Lippy loose-limbed liberatingly lyrical
Irreverent inspired je ne sais quoi
Vibrant Visionary with a capital V
Edgy eccentric essentially europhile
Racy restless raw rock 'n' roller
Pacy passionate positively pop
Obsessive optimistic on the go
Off the wall outlandish ee aye addio
Legendary life-giving life-loving Liverpool

With thanks to Roger McGough.
Reproduced by permission.
Poem commissioned by channel Five for their Five Arts Cities festival celebrating LIVERPOOL.

"Siena, Liverpool, Kyoto, Manhattan are examples of natural cities. Levittown, Chandigarh and the British New Towns are examples of artificial cities"
from the classic text 'A City is not a Tree' (1965)
Christopher Alexander

"..if Liverpool did not exist, it would have to be invented"
Myrbach

"I have never seen any place like Liverpool. Liverpudlians are proud of their birth place, not only for its history, supremacy as a sea port, delightful situation and surroundings, but because of its preeminence of its merchant princes and citizens stability, integrity, progressiveness and humour".
Recollections of a Liverpudlian, 1908

"They should build a fence around (Liverpool) and charge admission. For, sadly, it has become a showcase of everything that has gone wrong in Britain's big cities".
Daily Mirror commentary, 1982

"[Liverpool] is the most American city ... some charming buildings and architecture, but the car was allowed to slop all over the place".
John Norquist - Mayor of Milwaukee

"Nearly every street is a slum in this town, except those with the fine shops. Here is nothing intermediate."
Lytton Strachey - Liverpool 1898

"And so the beautiful sequence of buildings which stands for Liverpool's most deliberate piece or architectural aestheticism is really a testimony to the beauty-disregarding spirit of naked utilitarianism which her endless and imminent activities have made inevitable"
Walter Dixon Scott 1907 - on St George's Hall

"Liverpool is the Pool of Life"
Carl Gustav Jung

"The end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"
T.S Eliot [..and Liverpool Lime Street Station]

'Liverpool loves language - spoken or sung rather than written down - and for a time the whole country applauded.'
Peter Ansorge

For over two hundred years it was a boom town, driven by commerce, so that the older buildings were regularly swept away regardless of historical interest'
Joseph Sharples

'The history of the Liverpool dock system is a story of foresight and ingenuity, and of unprecedented ingenuity on a massive scale.'
C R Hutchinson

''How numerous now her thronging buildings rise!
What varied objects strike the wandering eyes!'
William Roscoe

Maritime commerce brought Liverpool not just wealth and employment, but also an air of cosmopolitanism that few cities in the world could rival, and it still has that sense about it. In Liverpool you still feel that you are some place"
Bill Bryson

Downtown is the independent urban think tank for Liverpool, UK.
We are a non-profit organisation dedicated to contemporary urbanism and the growth of a dynamic metropolitan Liverpool.