Boss Quotes

“Later, when they sat down and went over the figures closely, they found an interesting pattern. Adamowski had received fifty-one percent of the votes, cast by white persons. But the enormous black vote had given Daley his victory. The people who were trapped in the ghetto slums and the nightmarish public housing projects, the people who had the worst school system and were most often degraded by the Police Department, the people who received the fewest campaign promises and who were ignored as part of the campaign trail, had given him his third term. They had done it quietly, asking for nothing in return. Exactly what they got.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“Go that way, past the viaduct, and the wops will jump you, or chase you into Jew town...Polacks would stomp on you...Micks will shower you with Irish confetti from the brickyards.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“The neighborhood-towns were part of larger ethnic states. To the north of the Loop was Germany. To the northwest was Poland. To the west were Italy and Israel. To the southwest were Bohemia and Lithuania. And to the south was ireland...

you could always tell, even with your eyes closed, which state you were in by the odors of the food stores and the open kitchen windows, the sound of the foreign or familiar language, and by whether a stranger hit you in the head with a rock.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“The thing that got Daley mad," one of the delegates said later, "was that Ribicoff had been ass-kissing him just a day or two before. He came over and pushed for McGovern to our delegation and made a big speech about what a great guy Daley was. Then he got up there and played the hero for the TV cameras."
Daley was on his feet, his arms waiving, his mouth working. The words were lost in the uproar, but it was later asserted by Mayday, an almost-underground Washington paper, that a lip-reader had determined that he said: "Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“Behind the high-rises are the crumbling, crowded buildings where the lower-income people live. No answer has been found to their housing problems because the real estate people say there's not enough profit in building homes for them. And beyond them are the middle-income people, who can't make it to the high-rises and can't stay where they are because the schools are inadequate, the poor are pushing toward them, and nothing is being done about their problems, so they move to the suburbs.

When their children grow up and they retire, maybe then they can move to a lake front high-rise.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“If the regular pay was important to him, the opportunity to learn was of even greater long-range significance.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“So, for a variety of reasons, ranging from convenience to fear to economics, people stayed in their own neighborhood, loving it, enjoying the closeness, the friendliness, the familiarity, and trying to save enough money to move out.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“That is the greatest sin of all. You can make money under the table and move ahead, but you are forbidden to make secretaries under the sheets. He has dumped several party members for violating his personal moral standards.

If something is leaked to the press, the bigmouth will be tracked down and punished. Scandals aren't public scandals if you get there before you enemies do.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“The funeral home might be McInerney’s, which has matchbooks that bear a poem beginning, “Bring out the lace curtains and call McInerney, I’m nearing the end of life’s pleasant journey.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“the ingredients for the best political donnybrook”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago

“He runs City Hall like a small family business and keeps everybody on a short rein. They do only that which they know is safe and that which he tells them to do. So many things that should logically be solved several rungs below finally come to him.”
― Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago