Trains and Automobiles

Famous quotes containing the words trains and, trains and/or automobiles:

    The complaint ... about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernes, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances.
    —E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)

    In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.
    Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose and propriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes—as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.
    Frank Smith (b. 1928)