Bicycles and Cars - a Polarity in Civilization Design

Bicycles

“The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine.” ~John Howard

“Bicycle is the most energy-efficient form of transport ever devised. It doesn’t emit pollution, it runs on renewable energy, it makes its user healthier, it’s easy to repair, it requires little in the way of pavement or parking lot, and while only 10 percent of the world’s people can afford a car, 80 percent of the world’s people can afford a bicycle.” ~John C. Ryan, “Seven Wonders: Everyday Things for a Healthier Planet”

“The bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon.” ~Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist

“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 Hills

“It is curious that with the advent of the automobile and the airplane, the bicycle is still with us. Perhaps people like the world they can see from a bike, or the air they breathe when they’re out on a bike. Or they like the bicycle’s simplicity and the precision with which it is made. Or because they like the feeling of being able to hurtle through air one minute, and saunter through a park the next, without leaving behind clouds of choking exhaust, without leaving behind so much as a footstep.” ~Gurdon S. Leete

“Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds . . . man can hitch wings to his feet. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own.” ~Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington

“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race . . . Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia” ~H.G. Wells

Cars

“The average American’s involvement with their automobile is an astonishing 1600 hours a year. Working in order to buy it, actually driving it, getting it repaired and so on. This means that when all car mileage in a given year is divided by the time spent supporting the car, the average car owner is travelling at an average speed of 5 miles per hour. To attain the speed of a bicycle we are devastating our cities, air, lungs and lives.” ~Ivan Illich, social commentator

“Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.” ~Bill Vaughan

“In an underdeveloped country, don’t drink the water; in a developed country, don’t breathe the air.” ~Changing Times magazine

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

Planet

“Don’t blow it - good planets are hard to find.” ~Quoted in Time

Keywords : cars, bicycle, transportation, transit, mobility, air pollution, health, civilization, planet, design
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The quotations in this article is gathered from Quote Garden :

  1. www.quotegarden.com/car-free-day.html
  2. www.quotegarden.com/bicycling.html

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Published::
5.9.07 / 7am
Category:
Appropriate Science and Technology, Life's Necessities, Means, Paths, Ends
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