Golden Gate Bridge Quotes

“One soft humid early spring morning driving a winding road across Mount Tamalpais, the 2,500-foot mountain just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, 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, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“Don't you think the Golden Gate Bridge looks to the East in the same way the Statue of Liberty faces Europe, the Old World?' Mike now asked. 'That the Bridge and the Statue face in opposite directions, the Bridge is the end whereas the Statue is the beginning?'
'The Golden Gate Bridge should be understood symbolically,' Foucault responded, '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, Foucault in California [A True Story—Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death]

“I concentrate on the picturesque sight of the beach, whose light sand offers a fascinating contrast to the rugged black rocks. The rolling waves with their white crests add even more sparkling nuances to the countless shades of blue and white of the sky with the low-hanging fog. And the Golden Gate Bridge towers majestically above it all.
It’s overwhelming.”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Returning Home to Her

“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. The dense fog shrouding it cleared once we reached the other side. “Thickly fogged,” not California, may be the bridge's native state.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“The people prevented from killing themselves on the bridge wouldn't go on to jump off something else. Their decision to commit suicide is coupled with to that particular bridge... according to a very clever bit of detective work by psychologist Richard Seiden.. Seiden followed up with 515 people who had tried to jump from the [Golden Gate] bridge from 1937 and 1971, but had been unexpectedly restrained. Just 25 of those 515 persisted in killing themselves some other way. Overwhelmingly, the people who want to jump off the Golden Gate bridge at a given moment want to jump off the Golden Gate bridge ONLY at that moment. So when did the municipality that run the Golden Gate Bridge finally decide to install a suicide barrier? In 2018, more than 80 years after the bridge opened.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Talking To Strangers: What We Don't Know About Strangers

“Since the [Golden Gate Bridge] opened in 1937, it has been the site of over 1,500 suicides. No other place in the world has seen as many people take their lives in that period.

What does coupling theory tell us about the Golden Gate Bridge? That it would make a big difference if a barrier prevented people from jumping or a net was installed to catch them before they fell....

So when did the municipality that run the Golden Gate Bridge finally decide to install a suicide barrier? In 2018, more than 80 years after the bridge opened.

In the intermediating period the bridge authority spent millions of dollars building a traffic barrier to protect cyclists crossing the bridge, even though no cyclist has ever been killed by a motorist on the Golden Gate Bridge. It spent millions building a median to separate North and South bound traffic on the grounds of public safety. On the southern end of the bridge, the authority put up an 8 foot cyclone fence to prevent garbage from being thrown onto Fort Baker, a former army installation on the ground below. A protected net was even installed on the initial construction of the bridge at enormous cost to prevent workers from falling from their deaths. The net saved 19 lives. Then it was taken down. But for suicides? Nothing for more than 80 years...”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Talking To Strangers: What We Don't Know About Strangers