Top 55 Eric Garcetti Quotes

People will give you the responsibility, even the authority, to go after the big things, the visionary things, the reaching for incredible opportunities, if they trust that you’re running a city well. And if you don’t run a city well, conversely, you can’t do the big things.

In presidential elections, I think people focus way too much on ideology.

The problem with the Democratic Party is, we’re like, ‘If we just get another presidential candidate in there, everything will be OK.’ We should be focusing on school boards, city council races, state legislatures.

I’m in what feels like a pretty transparent fishbowl as mayor. People see you at the market, people see you at the diner, people see you wherever you are, talk to you. You don’t shave, they’re taking selfies of you. You come back from your jog, they’re talking to you.

As mayor, I’ve traveled to China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Mexico to meet with heads of state and business leaders to promote trade with L.A. companies and through L.A.’s seaports and airports – because that generates L.A. jobs.

Most people will be primarily getting into autonomous vehicles if we look 20, 30 years out. If we mandate that autonomous vehicles have to be electric, then we will move people into electric vehicles.

I want to turn momentum on traffic. I want to make in a dent in homelessness on the way to eradicating it on our streets. But there’s always something else to do tomorrow. And you have to be at peace knowing you’re not going to finish it all.

I don’t spend much time on the computer at all, so I do most of my email on my phone if I do any at all.

It is the responsibility, I think, of anybody in elected office to look for opportunities to help serve their people.

I recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And I have always recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state that we all want to emerge from negotiations toward a true two-state solution.

I think it is time for a radical federalism in this country, where people trust innovation coming from the local level and ramp that up.

I won’t be a perfect mayor, but I will be the mayor of a great city.

I’d hate to see new housing building accelerating while taking down buildings where there’s 50 people living in rent-stabilized apartments.

I agree with President Trump that we need good jobs in this country, but let’s get to that business rather than the distractions of repealing Obamacare or raiding communities and taking otherwise law-abiding, contributing citizens away from their families.

I’m not one of those politicians, to my probably discredit, who thinks very far ahead. It has to feel right to me and not be about a careful plot and plan.

It sure would be nice to have a Washington that was there for us, but most help has always been local and regional.

If you can speak Spanish, then you can have a stronger connection with the residents of Los Angeles.

I lived in Burma for a couple of summers in the ’90s, working with the democratic resistance that had fled to the jungles.

I always say, as a leader, you’ve got to know when to get out of the way.

The questions that consume me, that keep me up at night, are the people that are sleeping on the streets.

Mayors in any city are pretty non-partisan people where it’s problem solvers.

On things like the minimum wage, where cities as well as states are increasingly looking at income disparity, mayors will have, I think, a very strong voice.

You have to listen to your own heart.

I’m very much a California boy. I try to eat healthy and exercise.

L.A. is a great city to get lost in. The best thing to do is to drive in any direction, find a strip mall, and go from one store to the next. I guarantee you will see a collision of cultures you never imagined.

Aggressive government spending during the Great Recession was absolutely necessary.

If I hear that Quito, Ecuador, is doing something to have a whole area of town that’s zero emissions, and we’re thinking about that in Los Angeles’ downtown, I’m like, ‘I better catch up.’

The cost of housing in L.A. has increased dramatically because more people want to live here. They come to Los Angeles every day, not just from around the United States but from around the world.

The Olympics have been an amazing part of Los Angeles’ history. In many ways in 1932, they put us on the map when people didn’t even know where Los Angeles was. In 1984, they were the first profitable Olympics of the modern era.

Cory Booker I’ve known since 1993. We used to be part of the L’Chaim Society at Oxford University together.

I think connected to poverty is the trauma of poverty. It’s not just a material thing; it’s a psychological thing that we have no mental health system in this country.

I think poverty is the biggest challenge for Los Angeles and for many of our cities that have come back from the recession.

You see as mayors and local officials our jobs are designed so we have more in common with our constituents than Washington politicians can ever have.

I think I bring a perspective that local communities are what make this country great, and they are the laboratories of democracy.

You don’t have to be Latino to speak powerfully about how important it is to have a police department that cares for our immigrant communities.

I think, for me, the biggest issue is poverty in general, poverty in this time of plenty. It’s reflected in homelessness. It’s reflected in educational gaps. It’s reflected in racial disparities.

Environment, homelessness, infrastructure and immigration – I’m very focused on all four, which are critical to the success of Los Angeles.

I have to spend my time worrying about poor families at the expense of helping businesses, or vice versa. To me, I really see that’s the bridge I need to build.

The reason I like Steve Aoki is because I can trace my love of electronic music all the way back to when I was listening to not just new wave but to YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra] which, to me, was the ultimate Japanese band and launched synth electronic music.

In Washington, you have imaginary problems, and they can’t even solve the imaginary problems.

I think everyone has the impression that L.A. is Hollywood and fast lives. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Los Angeles has all the ingredients of success… but we need to start with our education system.

Mayors are accountable. Local governments are accountable.

I won’t let anybody, even the most powerful person in this country, trample our values or our Constitution. And no matter who’s in the White House, I am incredibly vigilant about that and will continue to fight that fight.

Campaigns are these moments of suspended animation where people usually learn how to be friends afterward.

I want to be high-profile with the average Angeleno. I want to be out there holding office hours on a curb in Boyle Heights.

There are two Americas: Washington and the rest of us.

Don’t run for mayor if you don’t want to basically be working all the time.

I’m a typical mutt American. I have an Italian last name. Half-Mexican, half-Jewish.

My main job and my overwhelming job starts with my family, my street, my neighborhood, and my city.

People elect me to make sure the chief of police is the right chief of police. They elect me to make sure I have the right person running the airport.

The classic rules of American politics are dying, if not dead, if you look at the last two presidential elections. An African-American could never be president until one was; a TV reality star couldn’t become president until one was.

I have a piano in my office, and sometimes during meetings, I’ll sit down and goof on the keyboard a little bit.

I have an incredible compass. You can put me back in a country I haven’t been in 20 years and say, ‘Get me from point A to point B,’ and I’ll take you there.

When it comes to public safety, I listen to police chiefs and cops, not to a cable-news station.