Detroit



Detroit is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan, the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of Wayne County. The municipality of Detroit had a 2019 estimated population of 670,031, making it the 24th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and 14th largest in the United States. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music and as a repository for art, architecture and design.

Quotes

 * Welcome to Detroit, where if you get that promotion? Don't worry, man, them bullets will still be at your ass firing.
 * Big Sean, "Detroit vs. Everybody" (2014)


 * Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.
 * City of Detroit's motto
 * In English: "We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes."


 * I have to tell you, I am thrilled to be here for a number of reasons. First, it's wonderful to be back in Michigan. You can really feel the energy and dynamism that is driving this state's comeback. And in Detroit, we've got new businesses that are opening. Neighborhoods like Midtown and Eastern Market are coming back. The auto industry just had its best year ever.
 * And I know my opponent in this election was here in Michigan about a week ago, and it was like he was in a different place. When he visited Detroit on Monday, he talked only of failure, poverty, and crime. He's missing so much about what makes Michigan great. And the same is true when it comes to our country. He describes America as an embarrassment. He said –and I quote – 'We're becoming a third-world country.' Look around you, my friends. Go visit with the workers building rockets. That doesn't happen in third world countries.
 * Hillary Clinton, remarks in Warren, Michigan (11 August 2016)


 * [T]he first motherfucker popping some shit, he gets killed. That's why we don't call it Detroit, we call it Amityville. You can get capped after just having a cavity filled!
 * Eminem, "Amityville", The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)


 * Flint, like most rust-belt cities, has been run by Democrats for generations. And, like many of those same cities, it has been enduring a slow-motion economic and cultural collapse. Its population has fled, it owes more than a billion dollars in unfunded pension liabilities, and it finds itself unable to afford the basic services its remaining population needs to preserve public safety and public health... Democratic Detroit responded by notifying Flint that it planned to shut off service in spring 2014, leaving Flint with a dilemma: Should it renegotiate with Detroit and pay still higher rates until 2016? Or should it seek a different water source? Flint chose a different water source: the Flint river.
 * David French, "Can the Truth Survive the Left’s Onslaught in Flint?" (25 January 2016), National Review


 * How could half the Democratic party support a movement that condemns America as a white-supremacist society, disregarding the reality that the president and chief law-enforcement officer, and thousands of civil servants and elected officials, including the mayors and police chiefs of large urban centers, such as Memphis, Tennessee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia are black? In Detroit the new mayor is actually the first white mayor in 40 years, while its police chief is still black... The Left is blind to the responsibility of inner-city populations for their off-the-charts violent-crime rates. The failure to embrace the responsibilities of parenthood is as characteristic of the progressive attitude as is its blindness to the betrayal of inner-city communities by Democrats, responsible almost entirely for the disgraceful condition of America’s cities. Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, and numerous other centers of out-of-control black poverty, failed public-school systems, and black-on-black violence are 100 percent controlled by the Democratic party and have been so for 50 to 100 years. Yet 95 percent of the black vote and 100 percent of the progressive vote continues to go to Democrats who oppress African Americans.
 * David Horowitz, "Is the Left Even on America’s Side Anymore?" (8 January 2014), National Review


 * In Detroit, niggas don't party. They pull a .44 out.
 * Rufus Johnson, "Good Die Young" (2004), D12 World


 * We have adopted in the modern world a sort of a relativistic ethic. ... Most people can't stand up for their convictions, because the majority of people might not be doing it. See, everybody's not doing it, so it must be wrong. And since everybody is doing it, it must be right. So a sort of numerical interpretation of what's right. But I'm here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong. It's wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it's wrong. It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It's wrong in every age and it's wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute.
 * Martin Luther King, Jr., Rediscovering Lost Values, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)


 * You gotta lose your mind in Detroit, Rock City.
 * KISS, "Detroit Rock City"


 * The new Detroit churning out Schumer-mobiles will make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency.
 * Charles Krauthammer, Column, November 28, 2008, "From market economy to political economy" at jewishworldreview.com.


 * Just a city boy born and raised in south Detroit; he took the midnight train going anywhere.
 * Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'", Escape (1981)


 * Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Glasgow are high spots of slavery in comparison to Albania, Bulgaria, or even Central Africa. The slavery of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up standards), the wage slavery of the proletarian, the school slavery of the children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke.
 * Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd (1943), p. 85


 * Detroiters are perhaps Detroit’s greatest asset. They have never stopped innovating and caring, and nowhere is this more evident than in the vast proliferation of urban gardens and farms that dot the city’s landscape... In Detroit — that fair city rising from the night sky — all dreams are possible.
 * Reif Larsen, "Detroit: The Most Exciting City in America?" (20 November 2017), The New York Times


 * Boy toy named Troy used to live in Detroit. Big dope dealer money, he was gettin' some coins.
 * Nicki Minaj, "Anaconda" (2014), The Pinkprint


 * After decades of neglect, Detroit is rolling again. It’s like the whole place is caffeine-buzzed, freewheeling in ideas. Young creative types jump-started the scene when they began transforming the crazy-huge slew of abandoned buildings into distilleries, bike shops and galleries. This sparked fresh public works, such as the just-opened hockey and basketball arena downtown, and the QLine streetcar that gives easy access to city hot spots. More are coming: three new parks will extend the riverfront trail (ideal for two-wheeling via the new 43-station bike-share scheme in the greater downtown area), plus groovy hotels will emerge from an old wig shop and a forlorn parking lot.
 * Lonely Planet, "Top 10 Cities to Visit in 2018" (2017)


 * Cities with some of the most brutal riots, such as Detroit and New Haven, were particularly well-endowed with the then-400-plus federal poverty programs, or that the welfare population was already skyrocketing, despite an unprecedentedly long period of economic growth.
 * Heather Mac Donald, "What Really Happened" (July 2001), City Journal


 * You weren't English or Canadian anymore. You were a Detroiter.
 * Jessica Care Moore, "The 1979 Bat mobile", as quoted in "StoryCorps Detroit: Poetry and Parenting" (16 December 2017), WDET


 * Detroit is the starting line of the world’s imagination.
 * Jessica Care Moore, as quoted in "StoryCorps Detroit: Poetry and Parenting" (16 December 2017), WDET


 * Contrary to the emotional blackmail some leftists are attempting to peddle, Baltimore is not America's problem or shame. That failed city is solely and completely a Democrat problem... Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind.
 * John Nolte, "Baltimore is a Democrat Problem, not America's Problem" (28 April 2015), Breitbart


 * Detroit is the first city since antiquity to go above a million in population and then below.
 * Jay Nordlinger, "Cleveland and Other Cities: Up and Down" (August 2018), National Review Online


 * (What does the current state of Detroit mean to you?) That the money and whites fled. That those who made their money out of the labor of hard workers did not give a damn what happened to them. That great music and writing and all kinds of art can still come from a place that is dear to me. That it is possible for Detroit to survive with new ideas but it will be difficult, Growing up in Detroit prepared me to be a lefty and a feminist.


 * Marge Piercy interview in My Life, My Body (2015)


 * Where's my gangsters, and all my thugs? Throw them hands up and show some love, and I welcome you to Detroit City!
 * Trick-Trick, Luis Resto, and Eminem, "Welcome 2 Detroit" (2005), The People vs.


 * The City of Detroit is where our story begins. Detroit was once the economic envy of the world. The people of Detroit helped power America to its position of global dominance in the 20th century. When we were governed by an America First policy, Detroit was booming. Engineers, builders, laborers, shippers and countless others went to work each day, provided for their families, and lived out the American Dream. But for many living in this city, that dream has long ago vanished. When we abandoned the policy of America First, we started rebuilding other countries instead of our own. The skyscrapers went up in Beijing, and in many other cities around the world, while the factories and neighborhoods crumbled in Detroit. Our roads and bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at taxpayer expense. Today, Detroit has a per capita income of under $15,000 dollars, about half of the national average. 40 percent of the city's residents live in poverty, over two-and-half times the national average. The unemployment rate is more than twice the national average. Half of all Detroit residents do not work. Detroit tops the list of most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime—these are the silenced victims whose stories are never told by Hillary Clinton, but victims whose suffering is no less real or permanent. In short, the city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent's failed economic agenda. Every policy that has failed this city, and so many others, is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton.
 * Donald Trump, remarks to the Detroit Economic Club (8 August 2016)


 * As President, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people.  The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world.  It is time to exit the Paris Accord and time to pursue a new deal that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country.   It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- along with many, many other locations within our great country -- before Paris, France.  It is time to make America great again.
 * Donald Trump, Paris Climate Accord Address, delivered 1 June 2017, Rose Garden, White House, Washington, D.C.


 * If heaven ain't a lot like Detroit, I don't want to go. If heaven ain't a lot like Detroit, I'd just a soon stay home. If they ain't got no 8 Mile like they do in "The D", just send me to hell or Salt Lake City. It would be about the same to me.
 * Uncle Kracker, "Heaven", Double Wide (30 May 2000), Lava Records


 * I was watching the news reports from Baltimore and hearing all the condemnations from some about being kept down and the lack of jobs, opportunity, good schools; then why do these blacks keep voting for the same people? And this isn't a phenomenon isolated to Baltimore. Every single major urban center in America is run by Democrats; more specifically, liberal progressives, black or white. The morass that became Detroit.
 * Allen West, "The dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore" (18 May 2015), National Black Republican Association