http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Topic: Automobile quotes en Sun, 31 May 2026 05:28:38 +0000 http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-382523 Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:36:47 +0000 neddie 382523@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote>"Bicycle is the slow death of the planet."⁣<br /> ⁣<br /> A banker made the economists think this when [they] said:⁣<br /> ⁣<br /> “A cyclist is a disaster for the country’s economy: [they don't] buy cars and doesn’t borrow money to buy. [They] don't pay insurance policies. Don't buy fuel, don't pay to have the car serviced, and no repairs needed. [They don't] use paid parking. Doesn't cause any major accidents. No need for multi-lane highways.⁣<br /> ⁣<br /> [They are] not getting obese.⁣<br /> ⁣<br /> Healthy people are not necessary or useful to the economy. They are not buying the medicine. They don't go to hospitals or doctors.⁣<br /> ⁣<br /> They add nothing to the country's GDP.⁣<br /> ⁣<br /> "On the contrary, each new McDonald’s store creates at least 30 jobs—actually 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 dietitians and nutritionists—obviously as well as the people who work in the store itself."⁣<br /> ⁣<br /> Choose wisely: a bike or a McDonald's? It's something to think about.⁣</p> <p>PS: walking is even worse. Pedestrians don't even buy a bicycle!⁣</blockquote><br /> ⁣<br /> ~ Emeric Sillo⁣<br /> ⁣ </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-379541 Sun, 04 May 2025 19:52:17 +0000 neddie 379541@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote> "WE'VE ARRANGED A society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?"</p> <p>"Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."</blockquote></p> <p>Carl Sagan </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-379527 Sat, 03 May 2025 18:14:39 +0000 neddie 379527@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote> "Instead of maximizing facilities for motorcars, we should maximize the advantages of urban life. Parks, playgrounds, schools, theaters, concert halls...are more important than any benefit to be derived from the constant use of the automobile."</blockquote></p> <p>—Lewis Mumford </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-364155 Tue, 11 Oct 2022 09:59:02 +0000 neddie 364155@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>More climate breakdown than automobile, but this is a great quote. I'm going to use it everytime someone asks if I did a particular thing to help "the environment" (like go by train, sell the car, turn the heating down, etc.) </p> <p><blockquote>It's not about "the environment." Stop using this phrase. It's about whether life on Earth collapses into a shadow of its former magnificence. It's about whether humankind thrives and evolves, or descends into a long and brutal dark age on a less habitable planet.</blockquote></p> <p>- Peter Kalmus, NASA Climate Scientist, 2022 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-357171 Fri, 26 Nov 2021 13:05:33 +0000 neddie 357171@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote>Soon, if we are not more prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets.</blockquote> - Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear (1952)</p> <p>...expensive television sets in the back of expensive SUVs or expensive motorhomes. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-355721 Fri, 15 Oct 2021 11:20:13 +0000 chdot 355721@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>“Energy And Equity”</p> <p>I keep meaning to re-read it. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-355720 Fri, 15 Oct 2021 11:16:52 +0000 neddie 355720@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote>The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines, but all other animals as well.</blockquote></p> <p>Energy And Equity Ivan Illich, 1973 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-351487 Thu, 10 Jun 2021 18:45:23 +0000 Cyclingmollie 351487@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>These are great. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-351485 Thu, 10 Jun 2021 18:14:49 +0000 neddie 351485@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote> "Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of...communities."</blockquote></p> <p> ― Jane Jacobs </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-351388 Tue, 08 Jun 2021 12:41:34 +0000 gembo 351388@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>@neddie and don’t forget your lightweight foldable grass comb. Or just use your foot to kick the grass back in to shape. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-351383 Tue, 08 Jun 2021 12:10:22 +0000 neddie 351383@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>"Travel light and leave no trace" - gembo, 2021 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-351381 Tue, 08 Jun 2021 11:27:24 +0000 SRD 351381@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>that is brilliant. </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-351379 Tue, 08 Jun 2021 11:16:49 +0000 neddie 351379@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote>"Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated and frustrated in return."</blockquote></p> <p>André Gorz, "L'Idéalogie Sociale de la Bagnole," in Le Sauvage, Sept-Oct. 1973 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-345781 Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:13:05 +0000 neddie 345781@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote> "Extreme libertarianism...begins on the road. When you drive, society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law: all become a nuisance to be wished away."</blockquote></p> <p>George Monbiot </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-344900 Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:21:45 +0000 neddie 344900@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote> "The right to access every building in a city by private motorcar, in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle, is actually the right to destroy the city."</blockquote> -- Lewis Mumford, 1964 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-344800 Sun, 24 Jan 2021 10:25:32 +0000 algo 344800@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>Can I just have a title?</p> <p><code></code><code>Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of The American Automobile</code><code></code><br /> Ralph Nader 1965 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-344788 Sat, 23 Jan 2021 20:24:52 +0000 neddie 344788@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote> "The Automobile, satisfier of private needs, demands, and whims — has created an insatiable demand for access, and a whole profession of planners...serving and further stimulating that demand.”</blockquote></p> <p>Donald Appleyard, Streets Can Kill Cities: Third World Beware! (1980) </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-344506 Wed, 20 Jan 2021 18:27:22 +0000 minus six 344506@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote>Hey!<br /> Listen, get this...<br /> Nobody with a good car needs to worry about nothin', do you understand?<br /> Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.<br /> And I'll tell you why!<br /> I come a long way since I believed in anything, and I come halfway around the world.<br /> Where you come from is gone. Where you thought you were going to weren't never there.<br /> And where you are ain't no good unless you can get away from it.</blockquote></p> <p>- Hazel Motes, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080140/">Wise Blood</a>, 1979 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-344494 Wed, 20 Jan 2021 16:35:54 +0000 neddie 344494@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote>High speeds for all means that everybody has less time for himself as the whole society spends a growing slice of its time budget on moving people...</p> <p>The allure of speed has deceived the passenger into accepting the promises made by an industry that produces capital intensive traffic. He is convinced that high-speed vehicles have allowed him to progress beyond the limited autonomy he enjoyed when moving under his own power...</p> <p>The passenger who agrees to live in a world monopolised by transport becomes a harassed, overburdened consumer of distances whose shape and length he can no longer control.</blockquote></p> <p>- Ivan Illich, "Energy and Equity," 1973 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-344493 Wed, 20 Jan 2021 16:35:00 +0000 neddie 344493@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p><blockquote>Beyond a certain speed, motorised vehicles create remoteness that they alone can shrink. They create distances for all and shrink them for only a few.</blockquote> </p> <p>- Ivan Illich, Energy &amp; Equity 1973 </p> http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=20470#post-344489 Wed, 20 Jan 2021 16:21:15 +0000 neddie 344489@http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/ <p>A thread to put all your favourite (anti) car quotes...</p> <p>I'll start:</p> <p><blockquote>The automobile has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving &amp; parked, it devours urban land, leaving buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous &amp; ugly traffic.</blockquote></p> <p>- James Marston Fitch, NYTimes, 1960. </p>