Truck Quotes (4 quotes)
Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just as mightily in the service of wonder–and the two elements are complementary, not independent or opposed. The thought fills me with awe–a mechanical contraption that could fit in the back of a pickup truck, traveling through space for twelve years, dodging around four giant bodies and their associated moons, and finally sending exquisite photos across more than four light-hours of space from the farthest planet in our solar system.
…...
The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not for the near future, in spite of many rumors to that effect. It is true, however, that, after preliminary negotiations have been arranged and the necessary action taken by the Legislature of different States, there will be found numerous capitalists ready to come to the support of the project. The location of the first road would probably be in Long Island, where the level country offers greater facility for construction. A more difficult proposition would be a road extending between New York and Boston. With a proper system of tolls the investment might prove a good one, and with a line of fast motor-trucks would be a satisfaction to the builders and to the farmers along the route. One road of this character would be a tremendous assistance to the good-roads movement. It is little realized as yet how far the benefit of well-kept roads extends. One of our consuls in France made a report, not long ago, in which he attributed the industrial and financial vitality of that country to the universal prevalence of good roads.
— Magazine
From 'Automobiling', Harper’s Weekly (2 Aug 1902), 46, No. 2380, 1047. [The first sentence is often seen in lists collecting seemingly absurd historic predictions. However, The full context given in this full-paragraph quote, shows how such lists often cherry-pick sentences for effect, not factual clarity. In the same issue, an editorial article described the ongoing “work of grading, straightening, and macadamizing the roads” by convict labor, using crushed rock laid with a steam roller, in 'New Roads of the New South' (p.1033). It concludes, “Many good-road organizations exist in the South. … The recent invasion of summer and winter tourists into the mountains of the South has given a great impetus to the improvement of mountain roads. In the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina there are many stretches of road, varying from ten to fifty miles in length, so perfectly engineered that one may drive over them at a trot every foot of the way.” ]
The crescendo of noise—whether it comes from truck or jackhammer, siren or airplane—is more than an irritating nuisance. It intrudes on privacy, shatters serenity, and can inflict pain. We dare not be complacent about this ever mounting volume of noise. In the years ahead, it can bring even more discomfort—and worse—to the lives of people.
In 'Special Message to the Congress on Conservation: “To Renew a Nation” (8 Mar 1968). Collected in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson: 1968-69 (1970), 363.
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1623768977
Johnson, Lyndon B. - 1970
The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, hand-carts, and bicycles which fearlessly find their way amidst the turmoil, with foot-passengers winding in and out, and covering the sidewalks with their multitude, give the effect of a single monstrous organism, which writhes swiftly along the channel where it had run in the figure of a flood till you were tired of that metaphor. You are now a molecule of that vast organism.
Describing streets in London, from 'London Films', Harper’s Magazine (), 110, No. 655, 72.