Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

I had learned what wealth was, and a great deal about production and exchange for myself in the early history of South Australia - of the value of machinery, of roads and bridges, and of ports for transport and export.

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.

We shall yet place an iron belt from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a railroad from Halifax to Nootka Sound …

No nation owes more to the steel wheel on the steel rail though it is not always clear whether railways were built to unite Canada, or Canada was created to justify the rail building.

It was only through the Government's help that anything this gargantuan in size could be accomplished, much as landing on the Moon. It was not rugged individualists who built the railroad, it was rugged corporations who formed and financed themselves as entities. It was the rugged federal government that came up with the federal loans, and the land grants, that enabled it to be built. Amid all the romance of building the railroad we tend to forget that it was one of the major industrial enterprises of its age.

Since the day that we first trod the soil of these valleys, have we received any assistance from our neighbors? No, we have not. We have built our homes, our cities, have made our farms, have dug our canals and water ditches, have subdued this barren country, have fed the stranger, have clothed the naked, have immigrated the poor from foreign lands, have placed them in a condition to make all comfortable and have made some rich. We have fed the Indians to the amount of thousands of dollars yearly, have clothed them in part, and have sustained several Indian wars, and now we have built thirty-seven miles of railroad. All this having been done, are our cities, our counties and the Territory in debt? No, not the first dollar.

The Soviet union was quite good at developing heavy industry, transportation, and large scale enterprises. It was very bad at producing consumer goods including the food that people must eat. That was its great economic weakness.

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

Why should we build very large spaces when they are not necessary? We can design halls spanning several kilometres and covering a whole city, but we have to ask, what does it really make? What does society really need?

But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Atlanta: those are all cities that really didn't get big, didn't hit their stride until the 20th century.

I created jobs and saved the taxpayers money on every road I built.

Nature made the fields and man the cities.

The common liberal orthodoxy that living close to the land leads to eco-awareness is historically naive, considering that Mesopotamia, northern Africa, and the Mayan civilization were ruined by people who had lived there quite a long while.

Once we started to urbanize, we put ourselves on this treadmill. We traded away stability for growth. And growth requires change.

The bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century

Our whole future depends on the railways

To create a housing shortage in a huge country, heavily wooded, with a small population—ah, that's proof of pure political genius.

We are sufficiently aware of the vast extent of the lands within Our Empire, We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade …. We permit all foreigners to come into Our Empire, in order to settle in all the governments, just as each one may desire.

The construction of the Intercontinental Railway is essential to the Consolidation of the Union of British North America.

The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam will make a great change in the situation of man.

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

A nation that derives its subsistence, principally from the forest, cannot live in the vicinity of one that relies upon the products of the field. The clearing of the country drives off the wild beasts; and when the game fails, the hunter must starve, change his occupation, or retire from the approach of cultivation.

The enhancement of the profits of agriculture, the excitement of manufacturing industry, the activity of internal trade, the benefits of lucrative traffic; the interchange of valuable commodities – the commerce of fertile, remote, and wide-spread regions, and the approximation of the most distant parts of the Union, by the facility and rapidity of communication that will result from the completion of these stupendous works, will spread the blessings of plenty and opulence to an immeasurable extent. The resources of the State are fully adequate without extraneous aid; and when we consider that every portion of the nation will feel the animating spirit and vivifying influences of these great works; that they will receive the benediction of posterity and command the approbation of the civilized world; we are required to persevere by every dictate of interest, by every sentiment of honor, by every injunction of patriotism, and by every consideration which ought to influence the councils and govern the conduct of a free, high-minded, enlightened, and magnanimous people.

America was not discovered. America was built.