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Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make. ~ George Will
A car is a wheeled, self-powered motor vehicle used for transportation and a product of the automotive industry.
- See also: transport
Quotes[edit]

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

Ferraris are art, but they love being driven. ~ Chris Evans

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
- 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)
- 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), pp. 9-10
- In Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.
- George Carlin, Brain Droppings (1998)
- The best British cars are Italian.
- Colin Chapman, radio interview to the BBC, ca. 1958
- Then there's power. There was a time when people cooed over Ferraris that developed 200 horsepower, whereas today 2.0 litre Escorts can manage that. It's almost impossible to buy a car that won't do a hundred. (If you really want one, various Mercedes diesels make a pretty good stab at it.) Then there's the environment. The Volkswagen Beetle could kill a rain forest at 400 paces whereas today's Golf trundles around with tulips coming out of its exhaust. The gas coming out of a Saab is actually cleaner than the air that went in. That's true, that is.
- Jeremy Clarkson, Born to be Riled (1999), p. 21
- Fast, truly exciting cars are being killed off so that pretty soon the officers will all be gone, leaving us with a field full of enlisted men.
- Jeremy Clarkson, Born to be Riled (1999), p. 34
- And therein lies the reason why motor industry people don't fawn on journalists. They're in the hot seat, deciding who gets to drive what and who gets to go where. Why should they grovel when they know that without their assistance the motoring journalist is up the creek without a boat, nevermind a paddle?
- Jeremy Clarkson, Born to be Riled (1999), p. 174
- Ferraris are art, but they love being driven.
- Chris Evans, Live magazine, the Mail on Sunday (UK) newspaper (29 November 2009)
- ... America aims at having a car for every citizen. I do not. I want freedom for full expression of my personality.
- Mahatma Gandhi in Jews and Palestine (July 1946), as quoted in The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings, p. 327
- Nine-tenths of our crimes an' calamities are made possible by th' automobile. It has unleashed all th' pent-up criminal tendencies o' th' ages. It's th' central figure in murders, hold-ups, burglaries, accidents, elopements, failures an' abscondments. It has well nigh jimmed th' American home.... No girl is missin' that wuzn' last seen steppin' in a strange automobile.... An' ther hain't a day rolls by that somebuddy hain't sellin' ther sewin' machine, or ther home, or somethin' t' pay on an automobile.... Maybe th' jails an' workhouses are empty, but that's not because th' world is gittin' better. It's because all th' criminals escape in automobiles.
- Kin Hubbard writing for his character, "th' Hon. Ex.-Editur Cale Fluhart."
Quoted in Norris W. Yeats, The American Humorist: Conscience of the Twentieth Century, Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1964, p. 107.
- Kin Hubbard writing for his character, "th' Hon. Ex.-Editur Cale Fluhart."
- 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), tr. Michael Kandel (1974), p. 136 in the Harcourt edition, ISBN 978-0-15-634040-3
- Here in my car, I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors. It's the only way to live, in cars.
- Gary Numan, "Cars" (August 1979), The Pleasure Principle (September 1979), United Kingdom: Beggars Banquet Records
- When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as quoted in "48 of Prince Philip's greatest gaffes and funny moments", The Telegraph (2 August 2017)
- Our interest in your Rolls-Royce car does not cease when you take delivery of the car. It is our ambition that every purchaser of a Rolls-Royce car shall continue to be more than satisfied.
- Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I Handbook (1955-1958), p. 14
- Looking out a dirty old window; down below the cars in the city go rushing by. I sit here alone and I wonder why.
- Kim Wilde, "Kids in America", Kim Wilde (1981)
- Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
- George Will, "Why Liberals Love Trains", Newsweek, (27 February 2011)
- The only way to clip the wings of the speed maniac is to furnish him with a truck that is geared for low or moderate speed and in which the power is limited, that is to say, furnish him with an electric truck. As an economic feature in the transportation of goods, the electric truck would long ago have secured the dominating position, but for the foolish notion some have derived from the gas car craze that high speed and power are essential to the moving of goods.
- “Speed Maniac New Menace to Trucks”, in Popular Electricity and the World's Advance, Volume 5 edited by Henry Walter Young, (May 1912), p. 219
See also[edit]
External links[edit]
Encyclopedic article on Car at Wikipedia