Locomotive Quotes

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

Big train from Memphis, now it's gone gone gone, gone gone gone. Like no one before, he let out a roar, and I just had to tag along.

There was a train that would come by our house every night, and I'd hear the whistle blow. That is the sweetest memory I have.

There's a big link between trains and film. One of the first filmed objects was a train. The clickety-clack of the projector and the clickety-clack of the train are similar. There is the idea of the voyage - every voyage is a story. I wonder if film would have been invented without the train.

The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship.

RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.

One of my earliest memories of something that caught my attention was of a steam locomotive. I guess mainly because they have so many moving parts that are out in the open. You can watch the valves moving back and forth - the driving rods.

There's nothing inherently lame about electricity. I've got a basement full of power tools that all operate with electricity, and they're manly items. And when you see a great big locomotive hauling a mile of freight cars, that's a hybrid. A lot of people don't understand that.

A lot of things work better in a locomotive.

I can go anywhere. In fact, for 'Three Billboards,' I was just getting on trains around America. I wrote everywhere from New York to New Mexico. I always write with pencil and paper.

Trains had the greatest bass sound in the world.

Lay my head on the railroad line. Train come along; pacify my mind.

I bought a railroad during this period of time.

The locomotive is coming into contact with the framework of our institutions. In this country of simple government, the most powerful civilizing force which civilization has yet produced must … assume its relation to that political machinery which is to control and regulate it.

A Train was born without any effort - if was like writing a letter to a friend.

In our State the locomotive has waked up the sleeping energies of a great people, and is transforming wasted fields into blooming gardens, and arousing men and women from the dull and heavy sleep that dwells with satisfaction upon the past, into the bright intelligence that looks to a glorious future ….

I could go back to the railroad. I liked that job.

Every small boy wanted to be a steam engine driver when they grew up in the old days, including me. There's something very special about them - the noise, the smell, the steam coming out everywhere.

The trains that travel the Chunnel are massive machines. The Eurostars are bullet-shaped and a quarter-mile long. They are pulled by a 136,000-pound locomotive and move in the open air at 185 m.p.h. and through the tunnel at 100 m.p.h.

I've been accused of being a shell designer - you start with a machine and enclose it. But in many cases, the shell is essential. A locomotive without a shell would be nonfunctional.

To tell the truth, in Pacific 231 I was on the trail of a very abstract and quite ideal concept, by giving the impression of a mathematical acceleration of rhythm, while the movement itself slowed . I first called this piece Mouvement symphonique. On reflection I found that a bit colorless. Suddenly, a rather romantic image crossed my mind, and when the work was finished, I wrote the title Pacific 231, which indicates a locomotive for heavy loads and high speeds (a type unfortunately disappeared, alas, and sacrificed to electric traction).