Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida. Florida is the 22nd most extensive, the 4th most populous, and the 8th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state capital is Tallahassee, the largest city is Jacksonville, and the largest metropolitan area is the Miami metropolitan area. The state government is controlled by the Republican Party, and its current governor is Ron DeSantis.

A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover. ~ Wallace Stevens

Quotes

Alphabetized by author or source

I turned my home state of Florida into the Land of Xanth. ~ Piers Anthony

Here in Florida … we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland — the blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine. ~ Walt Disney

You think the technicians, and prop people, camera people, directors, everyone who works at NASA, and the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and all the nice folks at Cape Carnaval in Florida, plus members of the US Congress and the White House all shut up about this amazing cover-up for all that time? ~ Penn Jillette

Just not being senile is considered great down here. ~ John Updike

A

In God We Trust.
- Anonymous, the official motto on the state seal, since 1845

I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humourous, and continued from there. I turned my home state of Florida into the Land of Xanth.
- Piers Anthony, as quoted in 100 Most Popular Genre Fiction Authors (2005) by Bernard Alger Drew, p. 11
It is my hope that we're moving beyond racial appeals here in Florida and in the rest of the South as well. I say it's time we told the rest of the nation that we aren't caught up in the mania to stop busing at any cost, that we're trying to mature politically down here, that we know know the real issues when we see them and that we no longer will be fooled, frightened and divided against ourselves. That is how the South can lead other regions to a better understanding of what this country's all about.
- Reubin Askew, Remarks on Busing, February 21, 1972, as quoted in Historic Documents of 1972. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

B

Southern states in general have seen more rapid growth in recent decades as people, especially retirees, have migrated to warm-weather states. Florida, which has a minimum wage that is 70 cents higher than the national minimum, has seen job growth of 110 percent since 1981.
- Dean Baker, "Tall tales about Texas" (13 June 2014), Al-Jazeera America

Florida’s a great place for folks in their old age…an’ it helps them get there faster, too. You go down for a change and a rest; the bellboy gets the change, an' the hotel gets the rest. The day I checked out they gave me a bill which looked like the distance to the farthest star computed in inches, an’ if I hadn't been able to leave behind me a suitcase containin’ ten thousand shares in a copper mine which may be discovered in Colorado some day, I would o’ felt mighty guilty slidin’ down that rainspout.
- Nelson S. Bond, The Gripes of Wraith (1946), reprinted in Peter Haining (ed.), The Flying Sorcerers (1998), ISBN 0-441-00577-2, p. 110

D

From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America’s shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the “heretic” and the “unbeliever”—including the “heathen” natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between Protestants and Catholics, present an unavoidable contradiction to the widely held notion that America is a “Christian nation.”. First, a little overlooked history: the initial encounter between Europeans in the future United States came with the establishment of a Huguenot (French Protestant) colony in 1564 at Fort Caroline (near modern Jacksonville, Florida). More than half a century before the Mayflower set sail, French pilgrims had come to America in search of religious freedom. The Spanish had other ideas. In 1565, they established a forward operating base at St. Augustine and proceeded to wipe out the Fort Caroline colony. The Spanish commander, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, wrote to the Spanish King Philip II that he had “hanged all those we had found in [Fort Caroline] because...they were scattering the odious Lutheran doctrine in these Provinces.” When hundreds of survivors of a shipwrecked French fleet washed up on the beaches of Florida, they were put to the sword, beside a river the Spanish called Matanzas (“slaughters”). In other words, the first encounter between European Christians in America ended in a blood bath.
- Kenneth C. Davis, “America’s True History of Religious Tolerance“, Smithsonian Magazine, (October 2010).

Here in Florida … we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland — the blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.
- Walt Disney, in an EPCOT promotional film (1966), the last film which Disney made; first publicly presented at a press conference in Winter Haven, Florida (2 February 1967); also quoted in Vinyl Leaves : Walt Disney World and America (1992) by Stephen M. Fjellman, p. 114.

The most exciting and by far the most important part of our Florida Project — in fact, the heart of everything we'll be doing in Disney World — will be our Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow! We call it EPCOT. … EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.
- Walt Disney, in an EPCOT promotional film (1966).

E

Being a child in Florida when my parents moved there in 1948 and witnessing the changes in the coastline, the marshes that I first discovered - finding horseshoe crab eggs, these tiny little creatures prospering in really clear water and going out on a dock at night and seeing these bioluminescent creatures just flashing and glowing - and witnessing the change, that the waters became not beautiful, clear and blue but muddy - that was powerful incentive to say, why are we doing this?
- Sylvia Earle Interview with NPR (2021)

F

When I was twelve, I helped my Daddy build a bomb shelter in our basement, because some damn fool parked a dozen warheads ninety miles off the coast of Florida. This thing could park a coupla' hundred warheads off Washington or New York and no-one would know anything about it until it was all over.
- Larry Ferguson, in The Hunt for Red October (1990), based on the novel by Tom Clancy.

Significantly, Floridians could not vote for Republican Abraham Lincoln, who was not on the ballot in any of the Deep South slave states. The hated 'Black Republican' Party was believed by most southerners to advocate abolition and black equality, although Lincoln and his party were primarily interested in restricting the expansion of slavery in the territories.
- Florida Memory

G

I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
- Neil Gaiman, American Gods, Ch. 13.

H

The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the south, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States — Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina— heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.
- David Hunter, General Order No. 11 (9 May 1862), Department of the South

J

Pensacola, I'm a rep it to death, 'cause I'm a Florida boy. Nothing more, nothing less. You disrespect or test what I say, it's body to the head, 'til shit go my way!
- Roy Jones, Jr., "Body Head Anthem" (2004), Roy Jones Jr. Presents Body Head Bangerz Vol. 1

L

Internet memes sometimes refer to Florida as "the America of America," but to a Brit like me, it's more like the Australia of America: The wildlife is trying to kill you, the weather is trying to kill you, and the people retain a pioneer spirit, even when their roughest expedition is to the 18th hole. Florida’s place in the national mythology is as America’s pulsing id, a vision of life without the necessary restriction of shame. Chroniclers talk about its seasonless strangeness; the public meltdowns of its oddest residents; how retired CIA operatives, Mafia informants, and Jair Bolsonaro can be reborn there.
- Helen Lewis "How Did America's Weirdest, Most Freedom-Obsessed State Fall for an Authoritarian Governor" The Atlantic (27 March 2023/May 2023 issue)
- Article about Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida since 2018, a Republican candidate for the 2024 United States presidential election.

M

Legendary was Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome. Today, almost as legendary is Florida's Xanadu, world's largest private pleasure ground. Here, on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain was commissioned and successfully built. One hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble are the ingredients of Xanadu's mountain.
- Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, in Citizen Kane (1941)

N

Where the hell's Fiji? Near Florida?
- Andrew Niccol, in The Truman Show (1998).

R

Virginia: Oh god no. He's a birthmark on his head that looks like a big old...
Jimmy: Florida. Shaped like Florida... Florida with balls.
- Raising Hope, "Say Cheese" [1.04]

S

California, Florida, whatever. Either way, your pale ass is getting a tan.
- Hubert Selby, Jr., in Requiem for a Dream (2000)

There was a moist, fertile, decaying sort of odor in the air. Florida was the sort of place that always seemed to be threatening to slip out of time and go back to the Paleozoic where it belonged. The light was a tawny gold filtered through a fragmented wall of green.
- Robert Sheckley, Hunter/Victim (1988), ISBN 0-451-15142-9, Chapter 38 (p. 175)

Man, you must love this fucking guy, 'cause he's the biggest pussy I ever met, the dude who lives his life according to everyone else's standards. "I have to go down to Florida and get married because that what's expected of me." And the fucking insane part is, he ain't even crazy about the chick he's marrying or Florida, never mind the fact that he's got a perfectly good chick right here in Jersey who he's nuts about and even Anne-fucking-Frank can see that she's nuts about him — God knows why. And she likes you for who you are, man. She ain't trying to stuff you into a box you'll never fit into, not to mention that she's carrying your hideous fucking C.H.U.D. of a kid. Jesus, if you had any sense whatsoever, you'd fucking stop trying to bray it up with the rest of the sheep and live your life the way it makes sense to you, you fucking ass.
- Kevin Smith, in Clerks II (2006).

A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.
- Wallace Stevens, in "O Florida, Venereal Soil".

T

U

One nice thing about Florida, it makes Pennsylvania look unspoiled.
- John Updike, in Rabbit at Rest (1990).

Just not being senile is considered great down here.
- John Updike, in Rabbit at Rest (1990).

W

There was a guy down in Florida who said that, at the age of 53 years old, he was in good enough physical condition to withstand the wind, rain and hail of a force-3 hurricane. Now, let me explain somethin' to ya: it isn't that the wind is blowin', it's what the wind is blowin'. If you get hit by a Volvo, it doesn't matter how many sit-ups you did that morning.
- Ron White, in They Call me "Tater Salad" (2004).

Y

There’s high awareness of the ballot measure. People understand Amendment 4 is on the ballot. But they don’t necessarily connect that there’s a six-week abortion ban.
- Alex Berrios, co-founder of the Yes on 4 campaign , according to With days until Election Day, groups make final push for Florida's abortion rights ballot measure (Oct. 30, 2024)