Word.ws English Dictionary

you can't fight City Hall

you can't fight City Hall proverb: nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm).

Proverb

you can't fight City Hall

  1. (US, figuratively, literal) Nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm).
    • I see they're going to build the airport after all. I suppose you can't fight City Hall.
    • As Audre Lorde, my professor at Hunter College, told our class in 1982, "That you can't fight City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall."1998, Sarah Schulman, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, Duke University Press, page 45

Forms of you can't fight City Hall

alternative formyou can't fight city hall

Questions about you can't fight City Hall

What does you can't fight City Hall mean?
You can't fight City Hall means nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm).
What part of speech is you can't fight City Hall?
You can't fight City Hall is a proverb.

Words near you can't fight City Hall in the dictionary

  1. you can't be half pregnant
  2. you can't break a stick in a bundle
  3. you can't break a twig in a bundle
  4. you can't break sticks in a bundle
  5. you can't catch old birds with chaff
  6. you can't fight City Hall
  7. you can't fix stupid
  8. you can't get a quart into a pint pot
  9. you can't get something for nothing
  10. you can't go home again
  11. you can't judge a book by its cover

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: you can't fight City Hall (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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