The activist is not the man who

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty.  The activist is the man who cleans up the river.  ~Ross Perot

Americans are broad minded people theyll accept the

Americans are broad-minded people.  They’ll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn’t drive, there is something wrong with him.  ~Art Buchwald, "How Un-American Can You Get?," Have I Ever Lied to You?, 1966, p. 197, chapter XII, self verified July 2002

It wasnt the exxon valdez captains driving

google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore)

It wasn’t the Exxon Valdez captain’s driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill.  It was yours.  ~Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990

Natives who beat drums to drive off

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.  ~Mary Ellen Kelly

As we watch the sun go down

As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters of our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us:  "With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight and air and food and water and ideas," or, "They went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them."  ~U Thant, speech, 1970

One of the first laws against air

One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal.  At least one execution for that offense is recorded.  But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England.  ~Glenn T. Seaborg, Atomic Energy Commission chairman, speech, Argonne National Laboratory, 1969

Restore human legs as a means of

Restore human legs as a means of travel.  Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.  ~Lewis Mumford

When man invented the bicycle he reached

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments.  Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man.  And (unlike subsequent inventions for man’s convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became.  Here, for once, was a product of man’s brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others.  Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.  ~Elizabeth West, Hovel in the HillsCQ

Im not sure about automobiles with all

I’m not sure… he’s wrongabout automobiles…. Eugene said.  With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization – that is, in spiritual civilization.  It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls.  I am not sure.  But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us suspect.  They are here, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring.  They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace.  I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how, though, I could hardly guess.  But you can’t have the immense outward changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that… George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us.  Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree… with him that automobiles ‘had no business to be invented.’  ~Eugene, from Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, 1918

The car has become an article of

The car has become… an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete.  ~Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964LCD

You go into a community and they

You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to 20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it.  We are a long way in this country from taking individual responsibility for the environmental problem.  ~William D. Ruckelshaus, former EPA administrator, New York Times, 30 November 1988