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Quotations
The Invention of the Automobile
“The automobile engine will come, and then I will consider my life's work complete.” • Rudolf Diesel
“A Frenchman has invented a horseless carriage. Which means that the French will have to eat more of their horses.” • St. Paul Daily Globe, 18 June 1895
“Don't call them automobiles! Call them abominables! Call them that for me!” • A.G. Sanford, May 1900, after losing his son to an automobile accident
"Through years of discouragement and effort they have worked out the problem, until to-day they have the perfected car, or one as near perfect as can possibly be made. The American automobile, as a rule, has become standardized, and it probably can never be bettered, except in minor details of finish and refinement of small parts.” •
John North Willys,
The Automobile as a Civilizer, 1909
“It does not take a great prophet to predict that the time is not so very far off when the good old horse will receive his well-earned rest, and become the pet, rather than the slave, of civilization.” • Alfred Reeves, General Manager of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce
“We have changed a lot from the good, old-fashioned days when every home had a spare room and there was spare rib at Thanksgiving time. Now the best we can have is a spare tire.” • Ralph Record, 1922
“I'd ban all automobiles from the central part of the city. You see, the automobile was just a passing fad. It's got to go. It's got to go a long way from here.” • Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“In every phase of the automotive industry, certain factors have been more important than all others in relation to the way the automobile has looked. Phase One is really the Ford story. Function and production were the most important considerations. The automobile was an invention, and it looked like one.” • Raymond Loewy
Advertising
“As long as the attitude is to only show the sheet metal, then automobile advertising will continue to be wretched.” • Jerry Della Femina
Aging
“Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. I've traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't paved.” •
unknown
Ambulances
“Y'all are obsessed with finding the correct hyper-specific label for your special strain of theoretical leftist ideology. Meanwhile, we still live in a country with privatized ambulances.” • P.B. Gomez, 2023
Animals
“Sad that cows don't know their biggest fans are women in passenger seats cheering them on.” • Isabelle @badbeanbella on Twitter
“Hey babe are you okay? You didn't say cows when we passed cows.” • anonymous, in response to the previous quote
Auto Industry
“I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.” • P.J. O'Rourke
"Americans like to blast along over interstate highways at eighty miles an hour in big cars with every kind of power attachment, windows up, air conditioning on, radio going, one finger on the wheel. That's what they want, and that's what they buy, and that's what we manufacture. We build the best cars we can to meet the taste of the American people.” • Henry Ford II
“Many of the temporary standards are unreasonable, arbitrary and technically unfeasible...if we can't meet them when they are published, we'll have to close down. If we have to close down some production lines because they don't meet the standards, we're in for real trouble in this country.” • Henry Ford II (on new safety regulations that were to take effect on 1 January 1968 as set in the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act)
“There was a study done in the early 20th century of all the entrepreneurs who entered the automobile industry around the same time as Henry Ford; there were something like 500 automotive companies that got funded, had the internal combustion engine, had the technology, and had the vision. Sixty percent of them folded within a couple of years.” • Eric Ries
“Vehicle emissions standards directly sparked the development and application of a wide range of automotive technologies that are now found throughout the global automobile market.” • Keith Ellison
Autonomous Vehicles
“With the invention of self driving cars, eventually there will be a country song about your truck leaving you too.” • from r/ShowerThoughts, 2017
“As self-driving cars become a reality, people will die in their cars and instead of causing an accident they will just show up to their destination dead.” • from r/ShowerThoughts, 30 July 2017
“A lot of people are going to be pissed when they find out their self-driving car won't go 60 in a 55.” • u/sparklingbuttknuckle on Reddit, 2018
Bicycles
“Y'all be riding them bikes in the street like I don't gotta look up my next song.” •
unknown
Body Art
“'Why tattoos? You wouldn't put stickers on a nice car.' Ma'am I am at best a 2003 Corolla.” • @michael_aas on Twitter, 2019
Bugs
“It's funny how we say 'a bug hit my windshield' when we are the ones going 70 mph. I'll bet the bug's family describes it differently.” • Melvin of York, 2021
“I like when flies won't leave my car on long road trips. Have fun moving to Kansas, you tiny idiot.” • Dave Cactus, 2018
“Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.” • from The Bug by Dire Straits, 1991
Buses
“That fact that everyone is texting and driving indicates to me that many people would enjoy and benefit from better transit. Like, the best part of the bus is you don't have to watch the road!” •
Warren J. Wells, 2022
“I'm a bus driver. If I'm having a bad day at work, I'll look in the mirror while driving, and mutter to myself "you're all cunts aren't you?" and then tap the brakes twice so they all nod.” •
anonymous
“My Tinder bio says that I have a corner office with views of the entire city, drive a $500,000 vehicle, and that I'm paid to travel. My dates are always upset when I tell them I'm a bus driver.” •
anonymous, 2021
“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.” • Margaret Thatcher
Buying
“Do you ever see people buy cars that they can't even begin to buy in terms of their income? You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don't earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. But it feeds a repressed ego. You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn't cost more than about twenty-five hundred. That's just good economics. And if it's a family of two, and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they would have to make out with one car. That would be good economics, although it's often inconvenient. But so often, haven't you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet. That's a fact.” • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Drum Major Instinct, 4 Feb. 1968)
Cities
“Nothing is more Atlanta than sipping an iced coffee while going 18 mph on the downtown connector in your Mercedes-Benz.” • Chris Landry, 2021
Costs of Driving
“For some reason we are willing to subsidize cars more than people. We think driving should be free despite the obscene costs for land, maintenance, pollution. All costs we socialize. Driving in a personal car is subsidized beyond any other activity. And then we turn around and calculate the 'loss' of public transport. Trains, buses, trams, are supposed to turn a profit despite their enormous savings for society as a whole. It's all backwards.” • Haraldur Thorleifsson, 2023
Class
“It is odd to me that a $2000 bicycle is a symbol of bourgeois excess while a $50,000 F150 is universally recognized as the rugged tool of the working class.” • @Sanjeeezy, 2000
Cultural Influence
“The automobile is an American cultural symbol.” • Raymond Loewy
“Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.” • Lewis Mumford (from
The Culture of Cities, 1938)
“Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain - at least in a poor country like Russia - and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.” • Leon Trotsky
“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.” • E.B. White (from
One Man's Meat, 1944)
“I think cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals. I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.” • Roland Barthes (
The New Citroën, 1957)
“The best British cars are Italian.” • Colin Chapman (radio interview to the BBC, 1958)
“The car has become a secular sanctuary for the individual, his shrine to the self, his mobile Walden Pond.” • Edward McDonagh (from an article in
Time, May 1963)
“All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.” • Mark Kennedy
“The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound.” • Marshall McLuhan (from
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964)
"Climbing into a hot car is like buckling on a pistol. It is the great equalizer.” • Henry Gregor Felsen (from
To My Son - The Teenage Driver, 1964)
"Americans like to blast along over interstate highways at eighty miles an hour in big cars with every kind of power attachment, windows up, air conditioning on, radio going, one finger on the wheel. That's what they want, and that's what they buy, and that's what we manufacture. We build the best cars we can to meet the taste of the American people.” • Henry Ford II
“Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekend exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home?” • Stanisław Lem (
The Futurological Congress, 1971, translation by Michael Kandel, 1974)
“As you move away from mass transit you become more dependent on the automobile, so you have to spread the housing out more to accomodate the cars.” • Sandy Hornick (from an article in the
New York Times, 21 May 1989)
“Remote villages and communities have lost their identity, and their peace and charm have been sacrificed to that worst of abominations, the automobile.” • James Norman Hall
“The automobile, both a cause and an effect of this decentralization, is ideally suited for our vast landscape and our generally confused and contrary commuting patterns.” • Brock Yates
“That is a fantastic American view, the rolling hills, then the craggy mountains, and the slowly and incompetently driven RV in the foreground.” • James May, on
James May's Road Trip, episode 9
“I do not understand people who will lustily throw $40,000 at the shiny red automobile of their choice, but well up with tears and become outraged when they are asked to pay $5 for a damaged videotape. Either they are fucked up and their priorities are fucked up or I am fucked up and my priorities are fucked up. Because I am me, I think it is them.” • Don Borchert,
Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library, 2007
“We who live in Dixie wear our regional pride on our cars. But one driver probably has less to be proud of. His bumper sticker reads 'Southern Born and Southern Bread.'” • Sandra Faires, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.” • Bill Bryson
“I suppose I try to look for those things where the world turns on you. It's every automobile accident, every accident at a party, you're having a good time until suddenly you're not.” • John Irving
“Automobiles have always been part of my life, and I'm sure they always will be. What is it about them that moves me? The sound of a great engine, the unity and uniqueness of an automobile's engineering and coachwork, the history of the company and the car, and, of course, the sheer beauty of the thing.” • Edward Herrmann
“The American automobile has changed the habits of every member of modern society.” • Raymond Loewy
“Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.” • Erma Bombeck
“America is sick and tired of spending hour upon hour sitting in their automobile trying to get to work, trying to get kids to school, trying to get to a doctor's appointment.” • Greg Abbott
“So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.” • Allen Tate
“In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.” • Bob Edwards
“The automobile is technologically more sophisticated than the bundling board, but the human motives in their uses are sometimes the same.” • Charles Mengel Allen
“A limit on the automobile population of the United States would be the best of news for our cities. The end of automania would save open spaces, encourage wiser land use, and contribute greatly to ending suburban sprawl.” • Stewart Udall
“I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter - nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.” • Molly Ivins
“A man from a primitive culture who sees an automobile might guess that it was powered by the wind or by an antelope hidden under the car, but when he opens up the hood and sees the engine he immediately realizes that it was designed.” • Michael Behe
“I'd always end up broken down on the highway. When I stood there trying to flag someone down, nobody stopped. But when I pushed my own car, other drivers would get out and push with me. If you want help, help yourself - people like to see that.” • Chris Rock
Dealerships
“Hey Charlie, I think I'm happy for the first time since my accident. I wish I had all the money that we used to spend on dope. I'd buy me a used car lot and I wouldn't sell any of 'em. I'd just drive a different car every day depending on how I feel.” • Tom Waits, Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis (1978)
Deliveries
While reversing the car: “Ahh, this takes me back.” • anonymous
“A UPS truck is like the adult version of an ice cream truck.” • Unknown (from a meme)
“Do you ever think about how since Doordash started, some amount of cars in a traffic jam are just someone's sandwich, a whole spot on the road just occupied by a guys lunch.” • Rob DenBleyker, 2023
“A nefarious but never talked about problem with car cities is that an ambulance w/ a dying person could theoretically be held up by several jimmy johns "Big John" roast beef sandwiches, if the timing were unfortunate.” • Rob DenBleyker, 2023
Detroit/Michigan
“To the best of my knowledge Michigan is famous for having a city that made enough cars that everyone could leave.” • @human_not_bees on Twitter, 2021
Driving
“Americans like to blast along over interstate highways at eighty miles an hour in big cars with every kind of power attachment, windows up, air conditioning on, radio going, one finger on the wheel. That's what they want, and that's what they buy, and that's what we manufacture. We build the best cars we can to meet the taste of the American people.” • Henry Ford II
“Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology.” • Jean Baudrillard (
America, 1988)
“Cars need a second, more friendly horn. Sometimes you wanna honk politely at someone.” • Norm Kelly, 2017
“If you rarely drive on snow, just pretend you're taking your grandma to church. There's a platter of biscuits and 2 gallons of sweet tea in glass jars in the back seat. She's wearing a new dress and holding a crock pot full of gravy.” • Chad Sullivan
“Whenever people tailgate me when I'm going 40 in a 35 I always purposely slow down because it's like I gave you an extra 5 and you didn't appreciate it so now you get nothing.” • @monschleichs on Twitter
“The only thing separating you from certain death at 65mph is a painted white line and a mutual agreement to not play bumper cars.” •
unknown
“You know life is weird when you actually wanted a green light to turn red just so you had a reason to be out driving longer.” • Carly Martin
“'Don't Text and Drive' signs are most likely being missed by their target demographics.” • from r/ShowerThoughts, 2021
Electric Cars
“Electric cars are not invented to save the earth. They are invented to save the car industry.” • “Cycling Professor” on Twitter, 2023
Environmentalism
“This movie's from 1972, so I had this great moment of nostalgia where I was like, remember when cars were just horrible rectangles made out of smoke? Everyone's just driving a tissue box around, pouring out oil onto a baby seal.” • Eli Bosnick, God Awful Movies, November 2016
“If we were driving pure hydrogen automobiles, that automobile would actually help clean up the air because the air coming out of the exhaust would be cleaner than the air going into the engine intake.” • Dennis Weaver
“You ingest the automobile in the very air of Detroit. Or at least you did in the 1940s and 1950s.” • Edward Herrmann
“But, as environment minister, I am very interested in a thriving German automobile industry, because I can only pay for the rising costs of environmental protection at home and abroad if there are people in Germany with jobs and who pay taxes.” • Sigmar Gabriel
“Electric cars are not invented to save the earth. They are invented to save the car industry.” • “Cycling Professor” on Twitter, 2023
First Cars
“Kids today have cool cars, and I object. Your first car needs to be a 1984 Geo Metro with a cracked windshield, an 8-track stuck on smooth jazz, a door that won't open, sparks flying off the tailpipe, and an ignition that only turns if you pray the Rosary 5 times.” • Crystal Lowery, 2020
Flying Cars
“They’ll be quite noisy, the wind-force generated will be very high. And let’s just say that if something’s flying over your head, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation.” • Elon Musk, 2017
Gasoline Prices
“These GPA-looking gas prices need to go! $3.89 is summa cum laude gas. I need some academic probation gas.” • @nottriscavello on Twitter, 2021
“I was robbed at a gas station in NJ last night. After my hands stopped trembling..I managed to call the cops and they were quick to respond and calmed me down..... My money is gone.. the police asked me if I knew who did it..I said yes.. it was pump number 9…” • Ice T, 24 March 2022
Gasoline Stations
“The chances of getting eaten alive by a cannibalistic crackhead at your local gas station is probably very low but it's never 0.” • @ifkndoubtit on Twitter, 2019
Gender
“If your truck didn't come with nuts, and you put nuts on that truck, you've just done gender reassignment surgery on your truck, and you're a liberal.” • Hermit Thrush on Twitter, 2022
GPS
“My GPS has started using the expression 'Your other left.'” • Bob Golen, 2021
“I would like a mildly criminal version of GPS that's like, 'would you like to make an illegal u-turn here to save 10 minutes?' And if you say no, it's like, 'nerd.'” • Jessica Fox
Headlights
“Maybe a controversial take but car headlights are too bright these days. Every single SUV is equipped with like military grade halogen retina destroyers. Jeep Grand Cherokee drivin' around with the 9/11 memorial spotlights on the front. Lighthouse-ass Chevy Tahoes. Grow up.” • Jack Crosbie, 2021
Highways
“Let us not hope or expect ever to find the final solution for all highway problems, for they will continue on to the end of the chapter, yet they will not be the same; or, at least, if fundamentally the same, will appear in different guises and with many modifications.” • Thomas H. MacDonald, Commissioner, ARBA Convention, 9 February 1921
“There are some matters which are subject to standardization where the greatest variety of practice now exists. Our pride should be not so much in a persistent adherence to our own ideas in such details, but rather our pride should be in promoting the science of highway engineering and placing our specialty in the engineering field on the same high plane of scientific attainment that has been reached by some other branches of the profession.” • E.W. James, First Annual Convention of the Association of Highway Officials of the North Atlantic States, 25 February 1925
“Americans are living in the midst of a miracle. A giant nationwide engineering project--the Interstate Highway System--is altering and circumventing geography on an unprecedented scale. Yet an individual can no more grasp the scope and magnitude of the entire project than an ant can comprehend New York City.” • Robert Paul Jordan,
Our Growing Interstate Highway System, National Geographic, February 1968
“The proposed interregional highway system may well constitute the key to the functional rebuilding of our cities [but] the cities themselves must recognize that while opportunity is at hand, they must exploit it to the fullest, if they are to survive.” • Thomas H. MacDonald, Commissioner, PRA, 21 January 1943
“I am convinced that better highways are essential both for a growing economy and for national defense. The programs outlined in the Acts of 1956 and 1958 are the very minimum necessary to meet the needs of the nation. If we allow this program to be curtailed, stretched out and weakened at this point, we cannot hope to have a Highway System commensurate with our needs within the foreseeable future.” • Senator Albert Gore, 5 October 1959
“Transportation systems for persons and goods determine to a large extent the physical development, functioning, and attractiveness of an area.” • Rex Whitton, Federal Highway Administrator, 3 February 1963
“Highways can destroy our country as permanently as bombs.” •
Life, 12 May 1967
“The only thing I'm sure of is that we must design, locate and build the remainder of the [Interstate] System with intensified concentration on safety, esthetics and other human values, as well as utility and efficiency. If a choice had to be made, I believe it would be better to sacrifice some small mileage than to build any remaining sections without the fullest consideration to these values.” • Frank Turner, Director of Public Roads, 11 July 1967
“Our nation--whether in its cities or its rural areas--cannot live without transportation, and highways provide the overwhelming proportion of that transportation. But highways can and must be made compatible with and enhance the environment, at the same time that they provide essential transportation services.” • Frank Turner, speech to the National Limestone Institute, commenting on the signing of NEPA, 22 January 1970
“There is a new philosophy underlying the highway program. It is predicated on the fact that social responsibility is an important aspect of highway building . . . . We must be concerned with the effects highways may have on the people living in the areas traversed, on their neighborhoods, their environment, their institutions and their resources.” • Ralph R. Bartelsmeyer, Director, BPR, 16 April 1970
“Common sense tells us that it will cost a lot less to keep the system we have in good repair than to let it disintegrate and have to start over from scratch. Clearly, this program is an investment in tomorrow that we must make today.” • President Ronald Reagan, 6 January 1983
“The Interstate Highway Act literally brought Americans closer together. We were connected city to city, town to town, family to family, as we had never been before. That law did more to bring Americas together than any other law this century, and that same spirit of connection and communication is the driving force behind the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” • President Bill Clinton, 8 February 1996
Historical Figures
“All I'm saying is that if you put one of the Founding Fathers in a GT350R and told them to drive it, they would probably cry.” • Alanis King, 2021
Horror Films
“People in zombie shows/movies only worry about gasoline for vehicles, and never about any of the other fluids like motor oil.” • u/JewwKnee on Reddit, 2023
Hybrid Cars, Plug-In
“It represents nothing less than the first step in the reinvention of the automobile.” • Bob Lutz (GM Fastlane Blog, 2008)
“Possibly the most sought-after technological innovation since Captain Kirk first flipped open his communicator is the plug-in hybrid.” • Matthew L. Wald (
A Plug-In Conversion for Prius, The New York Times, 27 April 2008)
Ice Cream Trucks
“Ice cream truck driver is the only profession where it's socially acceptable to drive to neighborhoods and lure children.” • u/Echoherb on r/ShowerThoughts, 2021
Joggers
“People who jog on the roads in the dark, wearing dark clothing and no lights or reflectors are a unique combination of a person who cares about their health and well-being and doesn't care about their health and well-being.” • MrSeverum on r/ShowerThoughts, 2021
Keys
“Your car key has traveled more than your car.” • from r/ShowerThoughts, 2023
Los Angeles
“Everybody knows that L.A. is known for its addiction to the single-passenger automobile, the gridlock, the congestion on the freeways.” • Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
“I liked Los Angeles for odd reasons. For one, there was no sense of community. You were really left to your own resources, spending this inordinate amount of time alone in a balloon of an automobile. I liked that a lot.” • John Gregory Dunne
“Having an automobile in Los Angeles enables me to change clothes at least three times a day: I will go from western wear to nautical to Savile Row in the course of 12 hours.” • RuPaul
As Metaphor
“A business, like an automobile, has to be driven, in order to get results.” • B.C. Forbes
“I look both ways before crossing a one way street. That's how much faith I have left in humanity.” • anonymous
“Our educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward things are barely discernible.” • Hermann Oberth
“There are no new facts about the Kennedys, only new attitudes, a literature that, like the automobile industry, puts new bodies on old chassis.” • John Gregory Dunne
“Television networks are a lot like automobile manufacturers or anyone else who's in commerce. If something out there catches on with the public... I guess you can call it 'market research.'” • Glen A. Larson
Motorcycles
“Love is the feeling you get when you like something as much as your motorcycle.” • Hunter S. Thompson
“Yet another way to make dreams come true...the dreams of people on the organ donor waiting list, that is.” • Bill Crittenden, commenting on the release of a new Ducati sportbike.
Music
“I hate when I turn my car on in the morning and the music starts blasting...and I am like 'whooooah big fella I'm not the same person I was last night.” •
unknown
New Cars
"Nothing ages your car as much as the sight of your neighbor's new one.” • Evan Esar (from
20,000 Quips and Quotes, 1968)
“Why are women wearing perfumes that smell like flowers to attract men? Men don't like flowers. I wear a scent called 'new-car interior.'” • Rita Rudner, September 2007 Reader's Digest
Parking
“A parking space in downtown Toronto makes $27/hr. I, a real person with thoughts and feelings, capable of suffering, makes less than a goddamn parking space.” • @bolanlikes2rock on Twitter, 2022
“I hate it when you have to park like a jerk because someone else did, then they leave and you look like the jerk.” • u/Space_Pegasus on Reddit, 2017
“One of the most common dashed hopes has to be driving up to an empty parking spot but finding a small car in it.” • u/TheSanityInspector on Reddit, 2019
“We've built so many of them, yet there's almost no time or weather -winter, spring, summer, fall, rain, sun, sleet, snow, morning, noon, night -when a big treeless asphalt parking lot is a nice place to be. It's not even where you'd park your car if you had any choice.” • Steve Inskeep, June 2022
“I'm just remembering that my second year in America, someone asked me to 'validate their parking,' which was my first time hearing the phrase, and after blinking stupidly in silence for a full five seconds I said 'Well, parking is really hard but I'm sure you did it really well.'” • Iva Dixit, 2021
Passengers
“Enid Nemy, that sparkling, star New York Times Style commentator, observed how car driving strains marriages almost to the point of rupture. She quotes one wife: 'In 35 years of marriage, I must have traveled 100,000 miles in the wrong direction with my husband. I've screamed and pleaded, but he's as stubborn as an ox. Every time we get into the car the same thing happens. I wear out my throat, and he ends up on the verge of apoplexy.'” • Malcolm Forbes, 1980
“No matter how synchronized synchronized swimmers are, they'll never be as synchronized as someone that keeps unlocking the car door for you to get in and you keep pulling the handle at the same time.” • u/garrenkeith on Reddit, 2018
Perspective
“It's funny how we say 'a bug hit my windshield' when we are the ones going 70 mph. I'll bet the bug's family describes it differently.” • Melvin of York, 2021
Pickup Trucks
“Country songs about sex in a truck bed next to a body of water in the South never mention how badly mosquito-bitten the participants would get” • u/TheNateRoss on Reddit, 2018
Police
“I learned from COPS that the best way to get out of a speeding ticket is to have something illegal in the car. I’m not sure how you get out of that felony charge though.” • @Spike on Twitter, 2017
Police Cars
“Empty cop cars are basically just scarecrows for people.” • Reddit u/FailTrooper via r/ShowerThoughts, March 2017
Politics
“Voting is like driving a car: select (R) to go backwards, select (D) to go forwards.” • unknown, as seen on a bumper sticker
“If a fetus is a person, can a pregnant woman drive in the carpool lane?” • PoliticalLoudmouth.com
“I blame feminism and Facebook for the death of the American automobile. I'm a Republican, so I blame everything on feminism - or commies.” • P.J. O'Rourke
“Voting is like NASCAR; If you don't want to crash and burn, keep going left.” • unknown
“Joe Manchin would lose a Republican primary in West Virginia to a Ford F-150 with a prosthetic scrotum hanging from the back.” • Elie Mystal, August 2021
“When u see a huge pickup truck with a "we the people" windshield decal in quill pen calligraphic script, that's when u know u are dealing with a sincere constitutional scholar and not just a roofer who fantasizes about shooting his ex-wife in self-defense.” • John Freiler, June 2022
Popular Culture
“Got stuck behind a car with the number plate: G4ND4LF earlier. Don't know who it was, but he wouldn't let me pass.” • @mariana057 on Twitter (Lord of the Rings)
Racing
“Auto racing began 5 minutes after the second car was built.” • Henry Ford
“There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles. It was the day they built the second automobile.” • Richard Petty
“Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports...all others are games.” • Ernest Hemingway
“If everything is under control, you're not going fast enough.” • Mario Andretti
“I didn't understand NASCAR until I met some NASCAR fans. You talk to a couple of NASCAR fans and you'll see where a shiny car driving in a circle would fascinate them all day. I can make fun of NASCAR fans because if they chase me, I just turn right.” • Alonzo Bodden, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“It's all fun and games until someone has to be mopped up off of the concrete with a sponge.” • Bill Crittenden, in December 2007, regarding Cannonball-style cross country races.
“Failures are much more dramatic than successes, and people like drama. I think this is why automobile races draw such crowds. People expect spectacular crashes, which we tend to find more interesting than cars just racing around the track. The same is true of bridges, buildings, or any structure or machine.” • Henry Petroskey
“This shoppin' cart ain't broke or wobbly, just needs a round of wedge and a trackbar adjustment.” • Matt Crittenden, 2013
“If it looks like it doesn't belong there, don't race it.” • Bab'Zulu on Twitter, 2023
Recreational Vehicles
“That is a fantastic American view, the rolling hills, then the craggy mountains, and the slowly and incompetently driven RV in the foreground.” • James May, on
James May's Road Trip, episode 9
Repair
“Would you rather change 100 wheel nut sized head gaskets, or one head gasket sized wheel nut?” • Chris Pollitt, 2019
Religion
“The Church is not an automobile showroom - a place to put ourselves on display so that others can admire our spirituality, capacity, or prosperity. It is more like a service center, where vehicles in need of repair come for maintenance and rehabilitation.” • Dieter F. Uchtdorf
“Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.” • Billy Sunday
“Being an atheist: it's like being the only sober person in a car full of drunk people, but nobody will let you drive.” •
unknown (from meme)
“Imagine if you will an atheist stuck at a green light behind a car with a 'Honk if you love Jesus' bumper sticker.” •
unknown (from meme)
Road Rage
“Whenever you meet someone, there's a small chance you've already flipped them off or cussed them out while driving without realising it.” • u/modest__mouser on Reddit, 2023
Road Trips
“It doesn't matter how old you get, buying snacks for a road trip should always look like an unsupervised 9-year-old was given $100.” • Jessi Lang, PhD, 2018
“Dads hate stopping on road trips because then all of the vehicles they worked hard to pass for the last hour get back ahead of them.” • "Average Dad" on Twitter, 2020
“America: You drive for four hours. You are still in the same part of the country. UK: YOu drive for two hours. The local accent has changed twice. Bread rolls have a new name.” • "Stefan" on Twitter, 2020
Roads & Highways
“Good roads are the highways to wealth.” • General Roy Stone, Director, ORI, 21 January 1897
“If we can put the road system of America where the road system of France is to-day, the annual saving to the people of the United States won't be much less than enough to pay the national debt.” • J. W. Abbott, 13 February 1902
“When [the people] demand that the United States shall not have the poorest rural roads of any civilized and some uncivilized nations, we as a nation will hasten into the fore front and finally lead the world in this vital department of civic life, as we are leading it in so many other departments today.” • Archer Butler Hulbert, Historic Highways of America Vol. 15, 31 May 1904
“The economical construction and maintenance of the type of road which is subjected to mixed automobile and heavy teaming traffic is probably the most difficult and important problem that to-day confronts the road engineer.” • Logan Page to the Society of Automobile Engineers in 1911
“To provide roads within the national parks and within the forests is a duty the Federal government must hasten, because the ever-increasing improved roads of the State of California and of adjoining States are going to make it possible for more and more people to get there.” • Thomas MacDonald, 1917
“With the mighty stimulus of a blending of public spirit and public need, we are on the threshold of the greatest road building era the world has ever known . . . The underlying principle . . . is cooperation and if we who represent the Federal Government and those who represent the State governments continue to deal with each other in accordance with that fundamental principle, I feel sure that we shall have no troubles that are not easily capable of solution.” • P. St. J. Wilson, ARBA Annual Convention, 25 February 1919
“We must find the way to keep our efficient railroads . . . while we continue to build up the supplementary service of our highways, for in the years ahead we shall need them both as our Roads to Prosperity.” • Herbert Fairbank, 21 February 1931
“Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.” • Lewis Mumford (from
The Culture of Cities, 1938)
“The problem with traffic is that the people of today are driving the cars of tomorrow on the roads of yesterday.” • Bob Talbert (in
Detroit Free Press, 1987)
“Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.” • Bill Bryson
“When all's said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it's not so much which road you take, as how you take it.” • Charles de Lint
“Never blame someone else for the road you are on. That is your own asphalt.” • u/bingousmc on Reddit, 2022
Safety
“Have you ever noticed that anybody going slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” • George Carlin, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“The road to the police court," mused the motorist, "is paved with good pedestrians.” • The Passing Show (London, 1922)
“[There are] only two classes of pedestrians in these days of reckless motor traffic - the quick and the dead.” • Lord Dewar (from
Looking Back on Life, 1933)
“Many of the temporary standards are unreasonable, arbitrary and technically unfeasible...if we can't meet them when they are published, we'll have to close down. If we have to close down some production lines because they don't meet the standards, we're in for real trouble in this country.” • Henry Ford II (on new safety regulations that were to take effect on 1 January 1968 as set in the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act)
“Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekend exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home?” • Stanisław Lem (
The Futurological Congress, 1971, translation by Michael Kandel, 1974)
“The problem with traffic is that the people of today are driving the cars of tomorrow on the roads of yesterday.” • Bob Talbert (in
Detroit Free Press, 1987)
“It's all fun and games until someone has to be mopped up off of the concrete with a sponge.” • Bill Crittenden, in December 2007, regarding Cannonball-style cross country races.
“A human being is still more likely to die of a bee sting, snake bite or, Lord knows, automobile accident than by shark attack. We do not execute the perpretrators of death by car. We should not butcher an animal for an inadvertent homicide.” • Peter Benchley
“Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.” • Ray Bradbury
“The killjoys initiated automobile crash standards so rigorous that we can't buy a car that hasn't been dropped from the top of a phone pole with our whole family strapped inside.” • P.J. O'Rourke
“The whole idea that vehicles in the future will communicate with each other is a really big deal. It's a big deal for safety... and it's an opportunity to engage the automobile in the work of ensuring collision avoidance.” • U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx
“The phrase “Click It or Ticket” shows financial burden is a stronger deterrent than serious injury or death.” • u/kevinsaidok on Reddit, 2017
“We ask everyone outside of the car to be safe so that drivers can be dangerous. That's the entirety of our approach to road safety.” • Tom Flood
Speed Limits
“Much unwise legislation is being indulged in both in relation to speed and taxation of the motor car, which will have to be repealed or ignored later on. Legislation now against a rich man's toy may later on be against a poor man's economy.” • Logan Page, Office of Public Roads Director, 15 February 1910
“Speed limit signs are meant as maximums but read as minimums.” •
unknown
“In New Jersey, 'speed limit 55' translates to 'if we all go 80 they can't pull us all over' and I think that's beautiful.” • @Ho33es on Twitter
Sports
“When I'm having a bad day, I like to drive by golf courses and honk the horn on players' back swings. Occasionally I'll get lucky and see a few middle fingers. Does anybody else do this? (I'm acknowledging that I probably need to get my head checked)” • hockey player Marc Methot, 2022
Sports Cars
“If you speed in a sports car, I assume you're a rich douchebag. If you drive it safely, I'm irritated and wonder why you even bought it.” • u/Flysusuwatari on Reddit, 2017
Taxation
“Much unwise legislation is being indulged in both in relation to speed and taxation of the motor car, which will have to be repealed or ignored later on. Legislation now against a rich man's toy may later on be against a poor man's economy.” • Logan Page, Office of Public Roads Director, 15 February 1910
Tires
“Remember when air was free at the gas station, now it's 50 cents. You know why? Inflation.”
“Tire place keeps trying to charge me for rotation, and I'm like, sir the tires should do that themselves it's basically their whole job.” • Chris Davies, 2021
Technology
“You don't have to know how to build an automobile or a television set or a laptop to know how to use it.” • Vint Cerf
“With a 3D printer, you could build your own car, one part at a time. When you were finished, you'd have an automobile that is extremely lightweight because it is made of plastic, which is good because you'd need to carry it because it is made of plastic.” • W. Bruce Cameron
“It used to be that if your automobile broke, the teenager down the street with the wrench could fix it. Now you have to have sophisticated equipment that can deal with microchips. We're entering a world in which the complexity of the devices and the system of interconnecting devices is beyond our capability to easily understand.” • Howard Rheingold
“The whole idea that vehicles in the future will communicate with each other is a really big deal. It's a big deal for safety... and it's an opportunity to engage the automobile in the work of ensuring collision avoidance.” • U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx
Tires
“My daughter in college texted me and asked where to go to get air in her tires. I told her the gas station and I swear on all that is holy her response was 'I only have $88 in my bank account. Will it cost more than that?'” • Jo Anna Parker, 2019
Traffic
“Traffic is so stupid like why am I waiting in line to go home.” • Twitter user @PainBeWILIN, April 2022
“Sorry I'm late traffic is exactly how it's been every day for the past 5 years and I was not expecting that.” • Karen Kilgariff
Turn Signals
“People who don't use their blinkers are people who literally will not lift a finger to make the world a safer place.” • u/Gidanocitiahist on Reddit, 2018
Weather
“Seattle drivers can understand one weather condition: mist. Any other kind of weather they've only read about in books.” • John Roderick
“Sure sex is good, but have you ever been the only person on the road with snow tires?” • ApexAdjacent, 2022
Quotations in Images
 |
Quote: "Auto racing began 5 minutes after the second car was built" - Henry Ford
Subject: 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT
Photographer: Bill Crittenden
Event: 2013 Woodstock High School Car Show
View photo of 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT - 3.8MB |
 |
Quote: "Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports...all others are games." - Ernest Hemingway
Subject: 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT
Photographer: Bill Crittenden
Event: 2013 Woodstock High School Car Show
View photo of 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT - 3.9MB |
 |
Quote: "Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports...all others are games." - Ernest Hemingway
Subject: 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT
Photographer: Bill Crittenden
Event: 2013 Woodstock High School Car Show
View photo of 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT - 3.5MB |
 |
Quote: "If everything is under control, you're not going fast enough." - Mario Andretti
Subject: 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT
Photographer: Bill Crittenden
Event: 2013 Woodstock High School Car Show
View photo of 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT - 4.2MB |
 |
Quote: "There is no such thing as a bad day at the race track."
Subject: Kasey Kahne at the 2012 Daytona 500
Photographer: United States Army MWR
License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License
Notes: The inspiration for this this comes from The Rookie, and the short story is that there's a scene where the main character is struggling in the minor leagues and ready to give up. He calls home, and remembers the struggles of life back there. He wakes up the next morning and tells his roommate in a really excited voice, "you know what we get to do today? We get to play baseball!" I think of that every time I see some mopey angry racer bitching about how hard it is after I've picked through the morning news of war casualties, starvation, and disaster looking for automotive news. I just want to say, "dude, you know what you got to do today? You got to drive a race car!"
View full image of "There is no such thing as a bad day at the race track." - 717KB |
 |
Quote: "If a fetus is a person, can a pregnant woman drive in the carpool lane?"
Source: PoliticalLoudmouth.com
Date: February 2013
View full image - 187KB |
Limericks
Here lies the body of William Jay,
Who died maintaining his right of way.
He was in the right, as he sped along,
But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.
Jokes
“My Tinder bio says that I have a corner office with views of the entire city, drive a $500,000 vehicle, and that I'm paid to travel. My dates are always upset when I tell them I'm a bus driver.” •
anonymous, 2021
“My friend's parents were always really worried she was going to become a stripper. But on her 18th birthday, she died in a terrible car accident. So really, they were worried about her hitting the wrong pole.” • Chelby Morgan
“You need a license to drive, you should definitely need a license to breed. That should be a rule. And honestly I’d be fine if the test was parallel parking for both.” • Noah Lugeons, 2017
"My wife always drives in the right lane when she's on the freeway. One day I asked her why she stays in that particular lane. 'That way,' she explained, 'if something goes wrong, I'll have a shoulder to cry on.” • Herwil Bryant, 2001 (via Readers Digest)
“When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking his automobile.” • Bob Edwards
“Why do barbers make good drivers? Because they know all the shortcuts.” • unknown
“Women only have trouble parking because we are constantly lied to about what 8 inches is.” •
unknown
“Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.” • Jason Love, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“Batman never fights crime in neighborhoods that need it. I'd like to see Batman fight crime in my neighborhood. 'Robin?' 'Yes, Batman?' 'Didn't we park the car right here, man?'” • Dave Chappelle, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“At what age do you tell a highway it's adopted? I think around seven because that's when they start wondering, Hey, I don't look like the Kiwanis Club.” • Zach Galifianakis, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“I'm on that diet where you eat vegetables and drink wine. That's a good diet. I lost ten pounds and my driver's license.” • Larry the Cable Guy, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“If carrots are so good for your eyesight, how come I see so many dead rabbits on the highway?” • Richard Jeni, September 2007 Reader's Digest
“I have a fear of speed bumps. I'm slowly getting over it.” • anonymous
“Why do chicken coops only have two doors? Because if they had four, they would be chicken sedans.” • anonymous
A bug hits the windshield while driving: “Bet he doesn't have the guts to do that again.” • anonymous
“Every time a bird shits on my car, I eat a plate of scrambled eggs on my front porch to show them what I'm capable of.” • anonymous
“The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.” • Art Buchwald
“...they're the cultural equivalent of an industrialist still insisting that the car's never going to catch on and pouring millions of R&D dollars into a genetically modified horse that eats diesel.” • Noah Lugeons, Scathing Atheist, December 2016
“I refused to believe that my dad got fired as a road worker for theft. But when I got home, all the signs were there.” • from r/DadJokes
“My daughter said I'd never make a car out of spaghetti. You should have seen her face when I drove pasta.” • from r/DadJokes
“Thought I saw a dino-Transformer eat a Car. Seems to me that would make it a Carnivore.” • Neil DeGrasse Tyson, 2017
“My friend has been a limo driver for 25 years and hasn’t had a single customer…All that time and nothing to chauffeur it…” • u/madazzahatter on Reddit, 2017
“When my car runs out of gas I buy a new one. I don't want to ride around in a quitter.” • Stephen Colbert, 2017
“I got a parking ticket for being parked illegally the other day and I’ve no idea why...The sign clearly said 'Fine for Parking.'” • u/madazzahatter on Reddit, 2017
“I have a bumper sticker that says, 'honk if you think I’m sexy.' I just sit at green lights until I feel good about myself.” • u/Jennifer-snider on Reddit, 2017
“I got so drunk I decided I'd play it safe and take a cab home. Next morning, I was like, 'whose cab is this in my garage?'” •
unknown
“Looking at 7pm traffic makes you think maybe, maybe Thanos had a point. Maybe.” • Aadar Malik, 2018
“A car's weakest part is the nut holding the steering wheel.” •
common
“The other day I was driving home and I saw a sign in front of a house that said 'Drive like your children live here.' But I don't have children. I'm not even married. Then I started daydreaming about getting married, have children, buying that house, and then I hit a parked car.” • Dan Bublitz Jr.
“The police just pulled me over, he came up to my window and said, 'papers?' I said 'scissors, I win' and drove off. I think he wants a re-match, he's been chasing me for 45 minutes.” • u/Treeselets on Reddit, 2018
“My annoying little cousin is bragging about how he sleeps in a race car bed. Whatever, you little idiot...I sleep in a real car.” • Ryan Patricks, 2018
“I heard the phrase 'fuck the speed limit' in Alabama. At that moment I realised that speed is relative.” • anonymous, 2022
“I never use turn signals. It's nobody else's business where I'm going.” •
unknown
“I couldn't find a parking spot at work today, so I went home. Looks like they had enough people.” •
unknown
English Driver
Cop: You’re driving on the wrong side of the road.
Driver: Sorry, I’m English.
Cop: (shouting) It’s the wrong soid of the roade ye was droivin down, innit?
@Mostly_Cheese on Twitter, 2017
Fiat Earth
Me: The earth isn't flat!
Fiat earther: Correct.
Me: Huh?
Fiat earther: It's the shape of an Italian car.
Me: What?
Fiat earther: You read my name wrong, didn't you?
u/venzann on Reddit, 2022
Trucker in a Brothel
A trucker who has been out on the road for two weeks stops at a brothel outside Atlanta. He walks straight up to the Madam, drops down $500 and says, "I want your ugliest woman and a grilled cheese sandwich!"
The Madam is astonished. "But sir, for that kind of money you could have one of my finest ladies and a three-course meal."
The trucker replies, "Listen, I ain't horny. I'm homesick."
Minister's Sign
Reverend Ole was the pastor of the local Norwegian Lutheran Church, and Pastor Sven was the minister of the Swedish Covenant Church across the road.
One day they were standing by the road, pounding a sign into the ground that read: "Da End iss Near! Turn Yourself Aroundt Now! Before It's Too Late!"
As a car sped past them, the driver leaned out his window and yelled, "Leave us alone, you religious nuts!'
From around the curve there was the sound of screeching tires and a big splash.
Rev. Ole turned to Pastor Sven and asked, "Do ya tink maybe da sign should yust say 'Bridge Out'?"
Shared by Gus Philpott 18 May 2008
Naked Woman
A naked woman jumps into a taxi. The taxi driver stares at her, looking her over from top to bottom. The woman is offended and asks the taxi driver "What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a naked woman before?"
The taxi driver responds: "Oh, it's not the fact that you're naked that bothers me."
"Then why are you looking at me that way?"
"Well, ma'am, I'm looking at you and thinking, 'where the hell is this lady keeping the money to pay for this ride?'"
unknown
Speeding Miner
A police officer stops a miner for speeding on the highway.
Cop: Whose car is this? Where are you headed? What do you do?
Miner: Mine.
Shared by u/calesty on Reddit, 2017
Valets
Man: Doctor, all five of my boys want to be valets when they grow up!
Doctor: Wow! That's the worst case of parking son's disease that I have ever seen.
u/porichoygupto on Reddit, 2018
Taxi Driver
Last Wednesday a passenger in a taxi heading for Midway airport leaned over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.
The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate window.
For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking driver said, "Are you OK? I'm so sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me."
The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, "I didn't realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly."
The driver replied, "No, no, I'm the one who is sorry, it's entirely my fault. Today is my very first day driving a cab. I've been driving a hearse for 25 years."
unknown
