Quotes about bulldozer (27 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life , Death , Money , People

“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Change

“Being a wiseass in a groupthink environment is like throwing an egg at a bulldozer.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

Source: The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire

“These flowers will be rotten in a couple hours. Birds will crap on them. The smoke here will make them stink, and tomorrow a bulldozer will probably run over them, but for right now they are so beautiful.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Beauty , Flowers , Bird

“I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 15, The Song Is Over

Life , Cars , Cats

“Auschwitz existed within history, not outside of it. The main lesson I learned there is simple: We Jews should never, ever become like our tormentors … Since 1967 it has become obvious that political Zionism has one monolithic aim: Maximum land in Palestine with a minimum of Palestinians on it. This aim is pursued with an inexcusable cruelty as demonstrated during the assault on Gaza. The cruelty is explicitly formulated in the Dahiye doctrine of the military and morally supported by the Holocaust religion.I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of "blood and soil" in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people -- coerced ghettoization behind a "security wall"; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival -- force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth. This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.”

Hajo Meyer (1924–2014) Dutch physicist

" An Ethical Tradition Betrayed http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hajo-meyer/an-ethical-tradition-betr_b_438660.html," huffingtonpost.com, Jan. 27, 2010. Retrieved on March 27, 2010.

Pain , People , Youth , Education

“Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers — obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Fools

“[While filming 'Ashes to Ashes'] So we're on the beach shooting this scene with a giant bulldozer. The camera was on a very long lens. [The camera is along way away, but the artist fills the frame] In this video I'm dressed from head to toe in a clown suit. Why not. I hear playback and the music starts. So off I go, I start singing and walking, but as soon as I do this old geezer with an old dog walk right between me and the camera… Well, knowing this is gonna take a while I walked past the old guy and sat next to camera in my full costume waiting for him to pass. As he is walking by camera the director said, excuse me Mr do you know who this is? The old guy looks at me from bottom to top and looks back to the director and said… "Of course I do!!!! its some cunt in a clown suit."”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

That was a huge moment for me, It put me back in my place and made me realize, yes I'm just a cunt in a clown suit. I think about that old guy all the time.
http://tonythegigguy.com/queen-bitch-beat-city-bowie-special-sleeve-notes

Dogs , Music , Way , Guy

“Science has made great progress in this world. Where we used to engage a thousand men to work, now a bulldozer does the work in seconds. But that makes a thousand people useless and unemployed. While unemployment is increasing in the world, people have lost their peace of mind. The reason for this is because man has ceased to work. Due to this inaction, all kind of pains and sicknesses are increasing in the world. I want you to take the energy of the machines into yourself and work like machines!”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 20 November 1983.

Men , Pain , People , World

“He had let himself be bulldozed by the odds against him. He promised himself never again to pay any attention to the odds, but only to the issues.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 4, “The Glory Road” (p. 45)

“In Barnette, we held that a public school student could not be compelled to recite the Pledge; we did not even hint that she could not be compelled to observe respectful silence.... Logically, that ought to be the next target for the Court's bulldozer.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On the Pledge of Allegiance: Lee v. Weisman (1992) (dissenting).
1990s

School , Silence

“I reckon that the Bailey Bridge and the bulldozer were the greatest advances in military engineering in the years between World War I and World War II.”

Christopher Vokes (1904–1985) Canadian general

My Service Before The War, p. 56
Vokes - My Story (1985)

War , World

“They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through mountains, cut down a thousand year of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn't touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn't be tainted.”

Ross Macdonald book The Drowning Pool

The Drowning Pool (1952)

Mountain

“It began with one pig at a British slaughterhouse. Somewhere along the production line it was observed that the animal had blisters in his mouth and was salivating. The worst suspicions were confirmed, and within days borders had been sealed and a course of action determined. Soon all of England and the world watched as hundreds, and then hundreds of thousands, of pigs, cows, and sheep and their newborn lambs were taken outdoors, shot, thrown into burning pyres, and bulldozed into muddy graves. Reports described terrified cattle being chased by sharpshooters, clambering over one another to escape. Some were still stirring and blinking a day after being shot.”

Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter

Dominion (2002)

World , Animals

“You just can't have this kind of war. There aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

In 1957, as quoted in No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security https://books.google.com/books?id=Y_klAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=%22there+aren%27t+enough+bulldozers+to+scrape+the+bodies+off+the+streets%22&source=bl&ots=g2f8x1zwaq&sig=JxpjSjWSWqsTKHpxnfAjjmW2ibU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAmoVChMI6cCQsa6SxgIVAWitCh3TUwty#v=onepage&q=%22there%20aren't%20enough%20bulldozers%20to%20scrape%20the%20bodies%20off%20the%20streets%22&f=false, by Thomas M. Nichols.
1950s

War

“Marianne tried to stay hopeful. But slowly her imagination bulldozed her optimism aside and pushed her mind into a dark place. There, she saw Abby tethered to the boat in her bright red foul-weather gear, being dragged along dead in the sea.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 172

Hope , Imagination , Optimism , Weather

“The golden toad was the first documented victim of global warming. We had killed it with our profligate use of coal-fired electricity and our oversize cars just as surely as if we had flattened its forest with bulldozers. It was as if, having experienced it, we did not recognize what happiness was.”

Tim Flannery book The Weather Makers

Source: The Weather Makers (2005), Chapter 12 (p. 119)

Cars , Happiness

“The critical question of "standing" would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972)
Often referred to as Douglas' "trees have standing" case.
Judicial opinions

Fashion , Question , Nature

“Say, take Rachel Corrie, local young woman, she was extremely courageous. She's a martyr for peace and justice. We happened to kill her too, even if we don't like to admit it. She was killed by U. S. sent equipment, which is Caterpillar…
[Q: you draw that line right back to you and me sitting here? ] Absolutely, we're responsible for it. I mean, we didn't drive the bulldozer, but why is it there? What's it doing? Who provides the military, economic, and diplomatic support for destroying the occupied territories?”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2005, Interview by Steve Scher on KUOW, 2004

Peace , Justice , Courage , Support

“What Atlantic City needs is a bulldozer six blocks wide.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

https://www.philly.com The Enquirer June 5 2015

“All of man's artefacts, whether hardware or software, whether bulldozers or laws of chemistry, are alike linguistic in structure and intent.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 227

Law

“Here is my proposal. Israel should announce an immediate unilateral cessation in retaliation against terrorist attacks. This moratorium would be in effect for a short period, say four or five days, to give the Palestinian leadership an opportunity to respond to the new policy. It would also make it clear to the world that Israel is taking an important step in ending what has become a cycle of violence. Following the end of the moratorium, Israel would institute the following new policy if Palestinian terrorism were to resume. It will announce precisely what it will do in response to the next act of terrorism. For example, it could announce the first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

"New response to Palestinian terrorism", The Jerusalem Post, 2002-03-11

World

“Cartridge firearms are compact vehicles for change that have shaped modern history. The righteousness of their use is entirely up to their users, since like any other tool they can be used both for good or for ill. A firearm is just a tool with no volition. A rifle is no different than a claw hammer. To wit: A hammer can be used to build a house, or it can be used to bash in someone’s skull—the choice of uses is entirely up to the owner. A bulldozer can be used to build roads, or to destroy houses. A rifle can be used to drill holes in paper targets, or to dispatch a marauding bear, or to murder your fellow man. Again, the choice of uses is entirely up to the user.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: Tools For Survival (2009), P.149

History , Change , Housing

“I think religion is utter nonsense, and I claim the right to criticise, ridicule and insult it as much as I like, but not the right to stamp out harmless aspects of it; which is why I'm a secularist, and not a totalitarian. I have a copy of the Bible in my house because it's part of my cultural heritage, not because I think the Bible is true any more than I think Shakespeare's plays are true, but I wouldn't be without them either. I like churches, especially the sound of church bells, and I don't want to see them bulldozed, but I do want to see the power of the Church not only bulldozed, but ground into a fine dust and buried in the deepest part of the deepest ocean on the furthest planet it's possible to find. Religion needs to be kept in check when it tries to step on people or when it tries to elbow its way into their lives uninvited. The Nativity doesn't do this. It doesn't even come close. It's part and parcel of the Christmas furniture. It's part and parcel of the culture that I and most people in the western world were born and raised in, and it only excludes people who want to be excluded.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"The intolerance of diversity" (22 December 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=IolHgMf_nbw
2011

People , World , Religion , Way

“If we could get them back to the '67 borders it certainly would be a triumph, but they're not about to move anywhere. They keep taking and keep bulldozing homes on the West Bank. They have Jewish-only roads. They would never tolerate that here…My view is that you should not create another nation in somebody else's country, and the Palestinians were 85 percent in the majority, until they began the immigration for the Jews and for the Zionists because they had designated Jerusalem as their home, that God gave it to them. Well, I mean, that's what God? Who? And so forth. Everything like that is just very debatable. Jews have been persecuted all over the world. There's no question about that. Certainly the Nazis. I mean, it's too horrifying to think of what they did and the silence in the world when it was happening. At the same time, they aren't the only ones who fought in World War II. I had my brothers, two brothers, were there. All my relatives. Every American was involved. So it isn't a question of the Holocaust was a simple thing going on. The Russians lost 25 million people.”

Helen Thomas (1920–2013) American author and journalist

Helen Thomas on Her Resignation and Middle East
Paul Jay
The Real News Network
2010-11-15
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5765
2013-13-20

God , War , People , World

“Who the fuck are you? Get out of my house…and take that fucking bulldozer with you.”

Billy Connolly (1942) British comedian

Housing

“Such hopes now seemed ludicrous in their naivety, like trying to stop a bulldozer with a feather.”

Alastair Reynolds book Pushing Ice

Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 13 (p. 216)

Hope , Naivety