Wayne Thiebaud Quotes

I was surprised at how cosmopolitan the Gold Rush was: prospectors were of all races, genders, and countries. I was equally surprised at how fast gold prospecting became big business.

The railway, the steamship, and there telegraph are rapidly mobilizing the people of the earth. The nations are coming our of their isolation, and distances which separated the different races are rapidly giving way before the extension of communication.

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles.

I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.

God tipped the country and all the fruits and nuts rolled west.

The dynamic drives of modern economic growth, in the countries that entered the process ahead of others, meant a reaching out geographically; and the sequential spread of the process, facilitated by major changes in transport and communication, meant a continuous expansion to the less developed areas.

When hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world went to the Yukon to look for gold, the original prospectors had already claimed most of it.

The first treasure California began to surrender after the Gold Rush as the oldest: her land.

The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.

For California Direct Extraordinary Inducements 35 Days to Gold Regions Steamship Nicaragua The Quickest, Safest, Cheapest Price of Passage Through: 90 Dollars

Railroads have more than realized the fabulous conception of the eastern imagination which picture the genii as transporting inhabited palaces through the air. They take a train of inhabited palaces from the Atlantic coast, and with marvelous swiftness deposit it on the shores that are washed by the Pacific seas.

Let us complete the grand design of Columbus, by putting Europe and Asia into communication, and that to our advantage, through the heart of our country. Let us give to his ships, converted into cars, a continuous course, unknown to all former times. Let us make the iron road, and make it from sea to sea.

Good roads and canals will shorten distances, facilitate commercial and personal intercourse, and unite, by a still more intimate community of interests, the remote quarters of the United States.

Soon you’ll be whirled along by steam in a country now only inhabited by wild beasts and Indians

The discovery of these vast deposits of gold has entirely changed the character of Upper California. Its people, before engaged in cultivating their small patches of ground, and guarding their herds of cattle and horses, have all gone to the mines, or are on their way thither. Laborers of every trade have left their work-benches, and tradesmen their shops; sailors desert their ships as fast as they arrive on the coast; and several vessels have gone to sea with hardly enough hands to spread a sail. Two or three are now at anchor in San Francisco, with no crew on board….I have no hesitation now in saying, that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers than will pay the cost of the present war with Mexico a hundred times over. No capital is required to obtain this gold, as the laboring man wants nothing but his pick and shovel and tin pan, with which to dig and wash the gravel, and many frequently pick gold out of the crevices of rocks with their knives, in pieces of from one to six ounces.

INTERESTING FROM CALIFORNIA—We have received some late and interesting intelligence from California. It is to the 1st of July. Owing to the crowded state of our columns, we are obliged to omit our correspondence. It relates to the important discovery of a very valuable gold mine. We have received a specimen of the gold.

Everybody was talking of “Gold! gold!!” until it assumed the character of a fever. Some of our soldiers began to desert; citizens were fitting out trains of wagons and pack-mules to go to the mines. We heard of men earning fifty, five hundred, and thousands of dollars per day, and for a time it seemed as though somebody would reach solid gold. Some of this gold began to come to Yerba Buena [San Francisco] in trade, to disturb the value of merchandise, particularly of mules, horses, tin pans, and articles used in mining.

Every seaport as far south as San Diego, and every interior town, and nearly every rancho from the base of the mountains in which the gold has been found, to the Mission of San Luis, south, has become suddenly drained of human beings. Americans, Californians, Indians and Sandwich Islanders, men, women and children, indiscriminately.

Carriages without horses shall go, And accidents fill the world with woe. Around the world thoughts shall fly Quick in the twinkling of an eye. The world upside down shall be And gold be found at the root of a tree. Through hills man shall ride, And no horse be at his side. Under water men shall walk, Shall ride, shall sleep, shall even talk. In the air men shall be seen, In white, in black, and even green; Iron in the water shall float, As easily as a wooden boat.

But for the difference in habit of observation, why did Yankees, almost instantly, discover gold in California, which had been trodden upon and overlooked, by Indians and Mexican greasers, for centuries.

The great Pacific Railway is commenced... Immigration will soon pour into these valleys. Ten millions of emigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years... This is the grandest enterprise under God!

The greatness of the Erie Canal is the American equal only of its equality and liberty.

There are sound economic reasons for believing that a great epoch of air transportation is being born. A new industrial and commercial era is beginning with the airplane just as surely as new areas began with steamships, railroads, and automobiles…. It is truly the Age of the Air.

Go ask Virginia— go ask even noble Maryland ... to show you her people, canals, railroads, universities, schools, charities, commerce cities, and cultivated areas.

It's not hard to generate a paper fortune in a huge inflation. All you have to do is own the most important economic assets: energy, communication, and transportation.