300 Fun San Francisco Captions + Inspiring San Francisco Quotes

Are you looking for cool San Francisco Captions for Instagram or perhaps inspiring or clever San Francisco quotes? San Francisco is such an epic city with so many iconic places such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the famous Alcatraz Island and the picturesque Fisherman’s Wharf. If you’re after quotes San Francisco inspired or Insta SF captions – I’ve got you covered!

In this post you will find all the inspiration you need to find that perfect SF quote! All 300 captions and quotes are divided into sections, you can check the table of content to quickly find the section of your interest.

In the first sections you will find my top picks for the best captions for San Francisco and top quotes about SF, followed by San Francisco One Liners and more short and sweet San Fran insta captions, perfect for Instagram photos.

There is also a section for the best Golden Gate bridge quotes. I love San Francisco quotes, funny quotes about San Francisco, famous sayings about San Francisco such as the super well known Mark Twain quote about San Francisco and much more! Happy browsing!

Best San Francisco Captions for Instagram 

In this section you will find the top pics of San Francisco Captions. In my opinion, a great San Francisco caption for Instagram should be short and witty – able to make someone stop scrolling the feed and stop at your post. Here are the best Captions about San Francisco, perfect for Instagram or any other social platform.   

1. Follow your heart, even if it takes you all the way to San Francisco.
2. In a Golden State of mind.
3. The cool, grey city of love.
4. Baghdad by the Bay.
5. Sanny Franny.
6. West Coast, Best Coast.
7. The windy city.
8. Everyone needs a little San Francisco in their life.
9. San Francisco is my kind of town!
10. This trip is Golden, baby!
11. I Left My Heart In San Francisco.
12. I fell in love. His name is San Fran.
13. Dear San Francisco, I will never get over you.
14. Nothing comes close to the Golden Coast.
15. Either you love San Francisco or you are wrong.
16. I left my heart in San Francisco…
17. Happiness is…. holding tickets that say, San Francisco!
18. San Francisco: The Golden Gate City.
19. Living in a Golden State of mind. 
20. San Fran – frowned upon by many locals.
21. Somewhere between living and dreaming, there’s San Francisco.
22. There’s no time to be bored in a city as beautiful as San Francisco. 
23. Greetings from San Francisco. I live here now.
24. What I like best about San Francisco is San Francisco.
25. Can’t wait to go back to San Francisco and see the sights!
26. Falling in love with San Francisco, one cable car at a time.

Best San Francisco Quotes for Instagram

This section is a collection of the very best San Francisco quotes. Some of the below quotes for San Francisco are poetic, others are simple and down to earth. Here, you’ll also find super famous San Francisco quotes from people like Frank Sinatra and Robin Williams. Which quote about San Francisco resonates with you the most?

27. “San Francisco has only one drawback – It is hard to leave.” – Rudyard Kipling

28.  “Two days in this city is worth two months in New York.” – Robert Menzies

29. “There may not be a Heaven, but there is a San Francisco.”  – Ashleigh Brilliant

30. “San Francisco is poetry. Even the hills rhyme.” – Pat Montandon

31. “I am a Bay Area guy, no question.” – Huey Lewis

32. “San Francisco is the friendliest city in the world.” – Joe DiMaggio

33. “Now there’s a grown-up swinging town.” – Frank Sinatra

34. “When you get tired of walking around in San Francisco, you can always lean against it.” – Unknown

35. “I’m a huge fan of the Bay Area so I always love coming to San Francisco.” – Ezra Koenig

36. “San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities.” – Cecil Beaton

37.  “San Francisco is exciting, moody, exhilarating. I even love the muted fogs.” – Julie Christie

38. “San Francisco is a mad city – inhabited for the most part by perfectly mad people.”– Rudyard Kipling

39. ​​“Money lives in New York. Power sits in Washington. Freedom sips cappuccino in a sidewalk cafe in San Francisco.” – Joe Flower

40. “San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.”– Frank Lloyd Wright

41. “I can walk down the streets of San Francisco, and here I’m normal.” – Robin Williams

41. “But oh, San Francisco! It is and has everything – you wouldn’t think that such a place as San Francisco could exist.” – Unknown

43. “San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.” – Paul Kanter

44. “California, more than any other part of the Union, is a country by itself, and San Francisco a capital.” – James Bryce

45. “San Francisco is a complex town that lets you be yourself, that accepts you even if your family doesn’t.” – Jack Boulware

46. “San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.” – Jack London

47. “San Francisco is a mad city – inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people.” – Rudyard Kipling

48. “San Francisco is a magical place where you can take a boat to the top of a hill and ride down in a cable car.”– Unknown

49. “When you get tired of walking around in San Francisco, you can always lean against it.” – Unknown

50. “The thing about coming back to the Bay Area, it’s like coming home for me.” –  Richard Serra

San Francisco One Liners

If you rather have a super short San Francisco Instagram captions, here are some ideas that include captions as well as San Francisco Instagram quotes.

51. The City By the Bay.
52. San Francisco is so pretty!
53. Dreamy City – San Francisco. 
54. I’m off to explore the city by the bay!
55. San Francisco, you never cease to amaze me.
56. “San Francisco, city of dreaming spires.” – Eddie Izzard
57. “San Francisco is poetry. Even the hills rhyme.” – Pat Montandon
58. The sun shines bright on the bay
59. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life. – William Saroyan
60. “East is East, and West is San Francisco.” – O. Henry
61. There are a thousand viewpoints in the viewtiful city.” – Herb Caen
62. “Up in the San Francisco, where the forest meets the bridge.” – Foxygen

Short San Francisco Instagram Captions

As I previously mentioned, short San Francisco Instagram captions are my favourite. People’s attention span is super short, especially when they are scrolling through Instagram. If you want to make sure your followers actually read your post, choose a short caption for San Francisco that draws people’s attention and is easy to read. Here is a list of the best short San Francisco quotes and captions. 

63. San Francisco: Everybody’s Favourite City.
64. The sun shines bright on the bay. 
65. San Francisco is always a good idea.
66. And the sun shines on the bay.
67. Chillin’ on the best coast.
68. I’m off to explore the city by the bay!
69. Cruising through Cali.
70. San Francisco is my happy place.
71. Finally ticked off San Fran from my bucket list. 
72. Paradise Found by the bay.
73. I’m having an affair with San Francisco.
74. San Francisco, I’ve really missed you.
75. A sunny day in the bay.
76. Up in San Francisco, where the forest meets the bridge.
77. Visiting the Bay with my bae.
78. Chillin in the San Francisco hills.
79. Is this trip golden or what?
80. Took bae to San Fran for the day.
81. Stay golden, San Francisco.
82. A trip to California is sure to please the soul.
83. West Coast, Best Coast.
84. In a relationship with San Francisco.
85. This view makes my heart sing.
86. Once upon a time in San Francisco.
87. You cannot stop San Francisco.
88. I’m so glad I live in San Francisco. It’s the best place to be!
89. And the sun shines on the bay. 
90. In that San Fran state of mind.
91. Took Bae To San Fran For The Day.
92. “The cool, grey city of love.” – George Sterling

Quotes about Golden Gate Bridge

Are you looking for quotes about Golden Gate Bridge specifically? This section is a collection of the best Golden Gate quotes, including inspiring Golden Gate Bridge quotes, funny quotes about the Golden Gate Bridge and super cute Golden Gate captions. Check the list below, and see if you can find your favourite Golden Gate Bridge quote. 

93. “San Francisco is a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.” – John Steinbeck

94. “I left my heart at the Golden Gate in San Francisco.” – Tony Bennett

95. “What has been thus played up in the form of Golden Gate should not be let down in colour.” – Irving Morrow

96. “The Golden Gate wasn’t our fault either, but we still put a bridge across it.” – Larry Wall

97. “This studio has more suspensions than the Golden Gate Bridge.” – Humphrey Bogart on Warner Bros.

98. “We crossed the famed Golden Gate Bridge, which you may know best from the opening credits of Full House, and also every bit of visual media that wanted to make clear that it takes place in San Francisco.” – Thomm Quackenbush

99. “Drafting is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. The closer you get to the end, the more you start to worry about the beginning.” – Peter James

100. “To this Gate, I give the name of Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate, for the same reason that the harbour of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn.” – Capt. John C. Fremont

101. “The Golden Gate Bridge’s daily showcase from enveloping stoles of mist to full glory is still the most provocative show in town.” – Mary Moore Mason

102. “The Golden Gate Bridge should have a long bungee cord for people who aren’t quite ready to commit suicide but want to get in a little practice.”– George Carlin

103. “I have known her for 15 years, and she is more beautiful than ever.” – Dean Jennings

104. “San Francisco! City of dreaming spires, people live here… Golden Gate Bridge, ahh, the Romans came here.” – Eddie Izzard

105. “Such was life in the Golden Gate: Gold dusted all we drank and ate…” – Robert Frost

106. “This bridge needs neither praise, eulogy nor encomium. It speaks for itself. We who have laboured long are grateful. What Nature rent asunder long ago, man has joined today.” – J. Strauss

107. “The Golden Gate Bridge should be understood symbolically, in the sense that it does not go from America back to America but that it should be something that could possibly open up out of America.” – Simeon Wade

108. “Animation had been used only for things like King Kong and the destruction of cities, which was very popular in the 1950s. I got tired of destroying cities – I destroyed New York, I destroyed San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Rome, and Washington. I was looking for a new outlet, and I came across the Sinbad legends.” – Ray Harryhausen

109. “You can find your way across this country using burger joint the way a navigator uses stars…We have munched Bridge burgers in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge and Cable burgers hard by the Golden Gate, Dixie burgers in the sunny South, and Yankee Doodle burgers in the North. We had a Capitol Burger – guess where. And so help us, in the inner courtyard of the Pentagon, a Penta burger.” – Charles Kuralt

110. You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars….We have munched Bridge burgers in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge and Cable burgers hard by the Golden Gate, Dixie burgers in the sunny South, and Yankee Doodle burgers in the North. We had a Capitol Burger – guess where. And so help us, in the inner courtyard of the Pentagon, a Penta burger. – Charles Kuralt

Short & Sweet Golden Gate Bridge Captions

If you haven’t found the perfect quote about Golden Gate Bridge in the section above, this section contains more Golden Gate Bridge instagram captions ideas that are simpler and easier to read. Can you see your perfect Golden Gate Bridge instagram caption yet?

111. Golden Gate Bridge. Golden beach. Golden life.
112. In a Golden State of mind.
113. I’m ready to see the Golden Gate Bridge.
114. Frisco.
115. Sanny Franny.
116. Oh how I’ve mist you, Golden Gate Bridge.
117. Baghdad by the Bay.
118. This trip is golden, baby.
119. Golden Gate Bridge and my Golden Life.
120. Feelin’ like a tourist at Golden Gate Bridge!
121. The suspension is kil*ing me.
122. My breath taken away at the Golden Gate Bridge.
123. Oh how I’ve mist you, Golden Gate Bridge.
124. I’m going to gate leaving San Francisco.
125. I’ve red that the Golden Gate Bridge is nearly two miles long!
126. My favorite place to be is San Francisco, I love the bay area.
127. ​​“Up in the San Francisco, where the forest meets the bridge.” – Foxygen
128. “What I like best about San Francisco is San Francisco.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

Mark Twain Quotes San Francisco

In this section, you will find what Mark Twain had to say about San Fran, including the Mark Twain famous quote San Francisco!

129. “Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome boy; in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather.” – Mark Twain

130. “I have always been rather better treated in San Francisco than I actually deserved.” – Mark Twain

131. “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” – Mark Twain.

San Francisco PUNS Captions

Ok, it’s time to have some fun and read through the hilarious San Francisco puns captions. Enjoy!

132. It’s hard to fog-get your first time in San Francisco.
133. I tried to catch some fog. I mist.
134. The streets here are San Frenetic.
135. It’s hard to fog-get your first time in San Francisco.
136. I’m going to gate leaving San Francisco.
137. I’m a San Fan-cisco.
138. Bae Area!
139. Nothing can gold a candle to this bridge.
140. Good bay, San Francisco!
141. I’m really Mission San Francisco.
142. Hello, Sun Francisco.
143. Sea-sing every moment in San Fran.
144. Loving the SF Bae.
145. MoMa-ney, Mo’ Problems.
146. This city is so Alcatra-ctive.
147. The streets here are San Frenetic.
148. There so SoMa-ny reasons to love this city.

149. It’s been Hayes since I’ve been to San Francisco.
150. Don’t be Russian up those Hills.
151. It’s been a while, San Francisco – I’ve really mist you.
152. Why is it so cold in San Francisco? Giant fans.
153. Leaving San Francisco gold turkey is hard.
154. Leaving San Francisco feels like a ca-Castro-trophe.
155. I’m going to Haight it when I have to leave San Francisco.
156. I’m going to Embarcadero on a Mission to explore San Francisco.
157. I’ve red that the Golden Gate Bridge is nearly two miles long!
158. San Francisco may be view-tiful, but nothing’s more beautiful than you.

Funny San Francisco Captions

Are you looking for San Francisco quotes funny style? I’ve got your covered my friend! This section is a collection of the best funny San Francisco captions and super entertaining, San Francisco funny quotes.  

159. Baghdad by the Bay.

160. Happy as a clam at Fisherman’s Wharf.

161. When the Painted Ladies match your OOTD.

162. How do you get out of San Francisco? Go straight..

163. San Fran – frowned upon by many locals.

164. Everywhere you look. Shoo-bit-a-ba-ba-bow.

165. “Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.” – Anthony Bourdain

166. “One day if I go to heaven… I’ll look around and say ‘It ain’t bad. But it ain’t San Francisco.’” – Herb Caen

167. “Los Angeles? That’s just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for the trip to San Francisco.”– John Lennon

168.  “I’m just mad for San Francisco. It is like London and Paris stacked on top of each other.” – Twiggy

169. “What do you call someone who makes cakes in San Francisco? A BAYYYYker

170. “Isn’t it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?” – Herb Caen

171. “I always see about six scuffles a night when I come to San Francisco. That’s one of the town’s charms.” – Errol Flynn

172. “America only has three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everything else is Cleveland.” – Tennessee Williams

173. “This city is a point upon a map of fog.” – Ambrose Bierce

174. “San Francisco is a lot like Amsterdam – free, open-minded and casual – though I expected better weather.” – Marcel Wanders

175. “It is a good thing the early settlers landed on the East Coast; if they’d landed in San Francisco first, the rest of the country would still be uninhabited.”– Herbert Mye

176. “As many of you know, I came from San Francisco. We don’t have a lot of farms there. Well, we do have one, it’s a mushroom farm, so you know what that means.” – — Nancy Pelosi

177. “Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.” – Susanna Kaysen

178. “Oakland has now increased its payroll to the point that it now ranks third in the Bay Area among all McDonald’s franchises.” – Sandy Alderson

179. “Chicago is the great American city, New York is one of the capitals of the world, and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic; San Francisco is a lady.” – Norman Mailer

180.  “The city had been kind to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.” – John Steinbeck

181. “Well, I grew up in the Bay Area, so I’ve been in earthquakes before.” – Joe Morgan

182. “I think the beauty of San Francisco is that you can skip without really freaking anybody out.” – Chris Reifsteck

183. “I was married once in San Francisco. I haven’t seen her for many years. The great earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the marriage certificate. There’s no legal proof. Which means that earthquakes aren’t always bad.” – W.C. Fields

184. “The number of foggy days over the city is never reported, reportedly. But take it from me,  there’s enough to satisfy everyone, and dissatisfy somebody.” – Herb Caen

185. “I have seen purer liquors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited.” – Hinton Helper 

San Francisco Sayings

Here you’ll find some cool San Francisco quotes and sayings that describe the city and can also make a good caption for Instagram. Here they are – top San Francisco sayings:

186. San Francisco: where the hills are alive with the sound of music!
187. Fog City.
188. My kind of city.
189. San Francisco: Everybody’s Favourite City.
190. West Coast, Best Coast.
191. Nothing comes close to the Golden Coast.
192. San Francisco: The City that Knows How.
193. You can leave San Francisco, but it will never leave you.
194. “I prefer a wet San Francisco to a dry Manhattan.” – Larry Geraldi
195. “If free speech and individuality are American characteristics, there is no place more American than San Francisco.” – Desi Del Valle

Inspiring Quotes about San Francisco

Here is a collection of poetic and super inspiring quotes about San Francisco. The quotes for San Francisco photos below are super beautiful and they will make anyone that reads them want to visit this epic city! 

196. “The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I’m here.” – Billy Graham

197. ”No city invites the heart to come to life as San Francisco does.  Arrival in San Francisco is an experience in living.” – William Saroyan

198. “If you’re going to San Francisco, you’re gonna meet some gentle people there.” – John Phillips

199. “I left my heart in San Francisco, High on a hill, it calls to me, To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.” – Tony Bennett

200. ​​“San Francisco itself is art… every block is a short story, every hill a novel, every home a poem.”– William Saroyan

201. “The port of San Francisco is a marvel of nature and might well be called the harbor of harbor.” – Juan Bautista de Anza

202. “You wouldn’t think such a place as San Francisco could exist. The wonderful sunlight there, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at your shoes.” – Dylan Thomas

203. “Every morning in San Francisco was a bit like waking up on the edge of the earth: beautiful and damp and wild, full of the strange music people make, open-armed, into the wind.” – Elizabeth Percer

204. “San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.” – William Saroyan

205. “I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills, slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts.” – John Steinbeck

206. “Money lives in New York. Power sits in Washington. Freedom sips cappuccino in a sidewalk cafe in San Francisco.” – Joe Flower

207. “Like its namesake, San Francisco opens its arms to all sentient beings. The emotionally and spiritually wounded, in particular, have always come here looking for freedom and change, for a place to grow and be themselves.” – Jim Crotty

208. “‘We are so lucky to live here,’ he would say, and she couldn’t disagree. They were lucky that the earth had conspired to heap up such startling beauty in one place, and they were lucky that it hadn’t all fallen apart yet in a geological catastrophe.” – Chris Adrien

209.  “San Francisco is a city with the assets of a metropolis without the disadvantages of size and industry.” – Jack Kenny

210. “San Francisco is a breathtakingly beautiful city, with lots of great contrasts between dark and light, often overlapping each other. It’s a great setting for a horror story.” – Christopher Moore

211. “It is a rich, lusty city, rippling with people, with movement, with girls in summer dresses, with flowers, with color; one of the great and wonderful cities of the world… the great seaport of the Pacific now, one of the great naval bases. Through it have poured a million men… And the sea is always just on the other side of those hills.”– James Marlow

212. “It’s simply a very romantic place. Just one look at any of those streets, and you couldn’t be anywhere else – it’s so beautiful, and there’s that location, and the sense of the free spirit. Who couldn’t become ravenous in such a place?” – Julia Child

213. “What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.” – H.L. Mencken

214. “The writer loves the fog as it pours in; he loves the sun when the fog pours out. The rest of California is Beach Boys country, but San Francisco has that moody thing going on, those blues notes wrapped in moisture, an atmosphere that tempers California dreaming and makes life more real.” – Eric Maisel

215. “A bend reveals a sudden vision of San Francisco in shades of blue, a city in a dream, and I was filled with a tremendous yearning to live in that place of blue hills and blue buildings, though I do live there, I had just left there after breakfast.” – Rebecca Solnit

San Francisco Love Quotes

Are you looking for Instagram captions for San Francisco that will express how much you are in love with the golden city? Below are the best San Francisco love quotes and San Francisco captions expressing admiration, enjoy!

216. “I fell in love. His name is San Fran.” – Unknown 

217. “Every man should be allowed to love two cities, his own and San Francisco.” – Gene Fowler

218. “I love this city. If I am elected, I’ll move the White House to San Francisco. Everybody’s so friendly.” – Robert Kennedy

219. “San Francisco is my favorite place on earth. I love the hills, the views, and the open space.” – Unknown 

219. “But oh, San Francisco! It is and has everything – you wouldn’t think that such a place as San Francisco could exist.” – Dylan Thomas

221. “I never dreamed I’d like any city as well as London. San Francisco is exciting, moody, exhilarating. I even love the muted fogs.” – Julie Christie

222. “I’m so glad to be back in San Francisco! I love the city” – Unknown 

223. “San Francisco is my kind of town! I love this place. It’s the perfect city for a guy like me.” – Unknown 

224. “I love San Francisco. It’s by the sea, there’s a feeling of people being there because they enjoy their life there.” – Brian Eno

225. “I was born and raised in the Bay Area. It’s the place I got a deep, deep affection for.” – Michael B. Jordan

226. “My heart is in San Francisco. I will always, always come back.” – Lily Kwong

227.  “San Francisco is one of the only cities I like to visit.” – LeRoy Neiman

228.  “If you have to be a one-hit wonder, then San Francisco is the one to have.” – Scott McKenzie

229. “I don’t think San Francisco needs defending. I never meet anyone who doesn’t love the place, Americans or others.”– Doris Lessing

230. “San Franciscans are very proud of their city, and they should be. It’s the most beautiful place in the world.” – Robert Redford

231. “Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty.  It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other city incites one to dream.” – Georges Pompidou

232. “The culture of this city is like no other. Many important men and women have made the Golden City their home because they fell in love with it.” – Mike O’Halloran

233. “San Francisco in shades of blue, a city in a dream, and I was filled with a tremendous yearning to live.” – Rebecca Solnit

234. “San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world I would probably rank it at the top or near the top. It’s small but photogenic and has layers You never have problems finding great angles that people have never done.” – Ang Lee

235. “I love this city. If I am elected, I’ll move the White House to San Francisco. Everybody’s so friendly.” – Robert Kennedy

236. “I love San Francisco for the music culture. There’s this vibe there that I can’t find anywhere else in the world. Easily one of the best places on the sea coast.” – Tash Sultana

237. “I love San Francisco so much. I call it the Emerald City and have been coming here since 1992. I have a few old friends that live here, and my aunt and uncle live in Oakland. I think it’s a magical city — it’s big, sexy and very ‘cosmo’ with a small-town feel.”– Andy Cohen

238. “The ultimate [travel destination] for me would be one perfect day in San Francisco. There’s no city like it anywhere. And, if I could be there with the girl of my dreams, that would be the ultimate!” – Larry King

San Francisco Song Quotes

Here are the most famous San Francisco song quotes that also can be used as San Francisco captions for Instagram.

239. “If you’re going to San Francisco. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. If you’re going to San Francisco. You’re gonna meet some gentle people there” – Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair, Scott McKenzie

240. “I wasn’t born there perhaps I’ll die there. There’s no place left to go, San Francisco” – San Franciscan Nights, Eric Burdon & The Animals

241. “When the lights go down in the City. And the sun shines on the bay. Ooh, I wanna be there in my City, oh. Oh, oh, oh” – Lights, Journey

242. “San Francisco. Open your golden gate. You let no stranger wait outside your door” – San Francisco, Judy Garland 

243. “My love waits there in San Francisco. Above the blue and windy sea. When I come home to you, San Francisco. Your golden sun will shine for me” – I Left My Heart In San Francisco, Tony Bennett 

San Francisco City Quotes

This section is a collection of San Francisco city quotes that describe how it is living in the golden city. They can inspire and also make very good Instagram captions for San Francisco photos. 

244. “If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.” – William Saroyan

245. “San Francisco is where you come when you want to see people looking like who they truly are.” — Mark Childress

246. “San Francisco beats the world for novelties, but the inventive faculties of her people are exercised on a specialty. Controversy is our forte.” – Unknown

246. “San Francisco is a city where people are never more abroad than when they are at home.” – Benjamin F. Taylor

248. “I was appalled that the San Francisco ethic [of the 1960s] didn’t mushroom and envelop the whole world into this loving community of acid freaks. I was very naive.” – Grace Slick

249. “San Francisco is a complex town that lets you be yourself, that accepts you even if your family doesn’t. No matter how uncomfortable your own skin feels, you can move to this city, discover who you really are, and plant your feet on the ground.” – Jack Boulware

250. ​​“The geniality of San Francisco’s economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.” – James Michener

251. “‘What brings you up to the City?’ he said when we were inside. To San Franciscans, there’s only one city.” – Ross Macdonald

252. “San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world…I would probably rank it at the top or near the top.  It’s small but photogenic and has layers…You never have problems finding great angles that people have never done.” – Ang Lee

253. “In all my travels I have never seen the hospitality of San Francisco equalled anywhere in the world.” – Conrad Hilton

254. “I think San Francisco is the best place in the whole world for an easy life.” – — Imogen Cunningham

255. “Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible.” – Walter Cronkite

256. “You can go one block to the next in San Francisco and get a completely different opinion of what the issue is.” – Don Johnson

257. “San Francisco always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world.” – Duke Ellington

258. “The good thing about being in San Francisco is it’s a city that seems to have the flexibility and undefined boundaries.” – Janet Varney

259. “Cities are like gentlemen, they are born, not made. I bet San Francisco was a city from the very beginning.” – Will Rogers

260. “There is more grace per square foot in San Francisco than any place on earth.” – Fulton J. Sheen

261. “San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all that thing you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

262. “I’m so happy to be back in SanFrancisco after a long day of exploring the city. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!” – Unknown

263. “Of all cities in the United States I have seen, San Francisco is the most beautiful.” – Nikita Kruschev

264. “San Francisco is really fun and liberal, and it’s my kind of politics. It’s like being Jewish in front of Jewish people.” – Elayne Boosler

265. “A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gape at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 a.m. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak dark grays San Francisco is such a city.” – Herb Caen

266. “I moved to San Francisco because the masquerade of kindly gestures is, at least, kind. And it remains kind. And all the people who would sit back and comment on the garishness of the costumes, the hollowness of the dialogue, the lack of divine conviction, well, all those people are either gone or fifteen years old.” – Jay Caspian King

267. “San Francisco put on a show for me. I saw her across the bay, from the great road that bypasses Sausalito and enters the Golden Gate Bridge. The afternoon sun painted her white and gold – rising on her hills like a noble city in a happy dream. A city on hills has it over flat-land places. New York makes its own hills with craning buildings, but this gold and white acropolis rising wave on wave against the blue of the Pacific sky was a stunning thing, a painted thing like a picture of a medieval Italian city which can never have existed.” – John Steinbeck

268. “There is no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. Its the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons.” – Dave Eggers

269. “I was born in San Francisco. I was raised in Oakland, so I’m, like, super Bay Area born, and, you know, it’s just really multicultural up there, and there’s a lot of subcultures just from, like, anything, like from rockabilly to, like, crazy punk scenes to, you know, a huge rap scene, and there are just all kinds of things you can do out there.” – Kreayshawn

Summer in San Francisco Quote Ideas 

270. “But I would rather be with you, somewhere in San Francisco on a back porch in July, just looking up to Heaven, at this crescent in the sky.” – Robert Hunter

271. “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” – Mark Twain.

272. “The morning, like all San Francisco mornings, promised spring. In California, the seasons come daily: spring, the dewy mornings draped lightly in gray mist; summer, when the sun burns through and rises directly overhead at midday; afternoon autumns, crisp breezy, when colors show off and the air smells clean into twilight; winter is the night.” – Elizabeth Stark

273. “Perpetual spring, the flare of adventure in the blood conspired to make San Francisco a city of artists.” – William Henry Irwin

274. “For those who come to San Francisco. Summertime will be a love-in there. In the streets of San Francisco. ​​Gentle people with flowers in their hair.” – Scott McKenzie

More Famous Quotes about San Francisco

If you’re still with me, then in this section you will find more famous quotes about San Francisco expressing love, admiration and personal experiences. Go ahead and use them as your San Francisco captions for Instagram.

275. “It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.” – Oscar Wilde

276. ​​”San Francisco has always been a haven for misfits and weirdos. I’m both of these, which is why I came here.” – Michael Franti

277. “To this day, the city of San Francisco remains to the Chinese the Great City of the Golden Mountains.” – Kai Fu Shah

278. “I love San Francisco.  It would be a perfect place for a honeymoon.” – Kim Novak

279. “The San Francisco Bay Area has more VC firms and dollars invested than all East Coast cities combined.” – Jose Ferreira

280. “You are fortunate to live here. If I were your President, I would levy a tax on you for living in San Francisco!” – Mikhail Gorbachev

281. “As a person of color from the South, San Francisco was the first city that really made me feel like an other.” – Barry Jenkins

282. “San Francisco is a mad city – inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of remarkable beauty.” – Rudyard Kipling

283. “To a traveler paying his first visit, [San Francisco] has the interest of a new planet. It ignores the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world.”– Fitz Hugh Ludlow

284. “Suddenly [we] reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.”– Jack Kerouac

285. “Whatever happened to predictability. The milkman, the paperboy, evening TV?” – Jesse Frederick, “Everywhere You Look”

286. “I love San Francisco and Brighton has something of San Francisco about it. It’s by the sea, there’s a big gay community, a feeling of people being there because they enjoy their life there.” – Brian Eno

287. “Once I knew the city very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris.” – John Steinbeck

288. “A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak dark grays — such a city is San Francisco.” – Herb Caen

289. “Anyone is fortunate to live here. If I were your president, I would levy a tax on you for living in San Francisco.” – Mikhail Gorbachev

290. “You wouldn’t think such a place as San Francisco could exist. The wonderful sunlight here, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at your shoes. Beautiful Chinatown. Every race in the world. The sardine fleets sailing out. The little cable-cars whizzing down The City hills… And all the people are open and friendly.” – Dylan Thomas

291. “San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus of the world – one of the really urbane communities in the United States – one of the truly cosmopolitan places, and for many, many years, it always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world.” – Duke Ellington

292. “That’s just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for a trip to San Francisco… And the beautiful old houses and the strange light. We’ve never been in a city with light like this.” – John Lennon

293. “A man was found floating dead in the San Francisco bay. a note in his pocket read: I won’t jump if someone smiles at me today.” – Aditi Babel

294. “We’re crazy about this city. First time we came here, we walked the streets all day all over town and nobody hassled us. People smiled, friendly-like, and we knew we could live here Los Angeles? That’s just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for a trip to San Francisco. And the beautiful old houses and the strange light. We’ve never been in a city with light like this. We sit in our hotel room for hours, watching the fog come in, the light change.” – John Lennon

295. “I have always loved the Bay Area. I spent a lot of time in the Bay Area. I started my career there. That’s a huge part of the excitement for me.” – Chili Davis

296. “I’m Proud To Have Been A Yankee. But I Have Found More Happiness And Contentment Since I Came Back Home To San Francisco Than Any Man Has A Right To Deserve. This Is The Friendliest City In The World.” – Joe Di Maggio

297. “That, my dear detective, was the other San Francisco. You’ve probably seen it before, just out of the corner of your eye. You’ve probably dismissed it all your life.”– Laura Oliva

298. “Growing up in northern California has had a big influence on my love and respect for the outdoors. When I lived in Oakland, we would think nothing of driving to Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz one day and then driving to the foothills of the Sierras the next day.” – Tom Hanks

299. “Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much gone to me. You go there as a snarky New Yorker thinking it’s politically correct, it’s crunchy granola, it’s vegetarian, and it surprises you every time. It’s a two-fisted drinking town, a carnivorous meat-eating town, it’s dirty and nasty and wonderful.” – Anthony Bourdain

300. “Where else but in San Francisco would characters such as Sister Boom-Boom, a transvestite who dresses in a miniskirted nun’s habit, and a punk rocker named Jello Biafra run for seats on the Board of Supervisors? And where else would 75,000 runners dress like centipedes, gorillas, and six packs of beer to participate in the ‘moving masquerade ball’ otherwise known as the Bay to Breakers Race?” – JoAnne Davidson

Final Word

I hope you enjoyed reading all the awesome San Francisco captions for Instagram and beautiful, insightful San Francisco quotes! If you want to find more travel or Insta inspiration, meet me on Instagram!

Mal xx

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