Quotes about passenger (114 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like the passengers in his car.”

Jack Handey (1949) American comedian

Saturday Night Live (1993)

Sleep , Cars

“When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Cars , Sleep , Funny

“I'd like to die like my old dad, peacefully in his sleep, not screaming like his passengers.”

Bob Monkhouse (1928–2003) English entertainer

Guardian obituary http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/dec/30/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

Sleep

“When travel outside the city is desired, computer-guided vehicles for land, sea, air, space and beyond can transport passengers and freight. For rapid movement of passengers on land across via ducts, bridges, and tunnels, high-speed mag-lev trains span great distances and will efficiently replace most aircraft transportation.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Designing the Future (2007)

Training , Travel , Sea , Speed

“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”

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

Statement in 1965, in reference to Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963) by Buckminster Fuller, as quoted Paradigms Lost: Learning from Environmental Mistakes, Mishaps and Misdeeds (2005) by Daniel A. Vallero, p. 367
1960s

“I compare my situation to a person on board a ship. When there is a shipwreck the passenger then falls in the ocean and has no choice but to keep swimming. What happened in our society was that the laws overturned every right that women had. I had no choice. I could not get tired, I could not lose hope. I cannot afford to do that.”

Shirin Ebadi (1947) Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

From 2006 interview with Ebadi by Harry Kreisler (translator, Banafsheh Keynoush) about her newly released book, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope.
From May 10 2006 interview with Ebadi at Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Ebadi/ebadi-con3.html (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

Women , Law , Hope , Personality

“I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.”

Diane Ackerman (1948) Author, poet, naturalist

On Extended Wings (1985)

Life

“There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

The Russian Revolution (1930)

Cars , Question , Speed , Training

“We later learned that all the nineteen passengers in the non-smoking compartment had been killed. When the plane had hit the water a hole had been made in the plane and the water had rushed in. I had told a friend at Oslo who was finding me a place that he must find me a place where I could smoke, remarking jocularly, 'If I cannot smoke, I shall die.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Unexpectedly, this turned out to be true.
1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)

Learning , Water

“A lot has changed, El Paso, a lot has changed. One thing's for sure, I'm still the fluffy guy. And I say "fluffy" because that is the politically correct term, for those of you who don't remember I used to say that there were Five Levels of Fatness. Reason why I say "Used to say" is because now there are six! Uh-huh, I met the new one in Las Cruces. The original five levels are Big, Healthy, Husky, Fluffy, and DAMN! People ask, "What could be bigger than DAMN!" The new level's called "OH HELL NO!" What's the difference? You're still willing to work with level five. Example, if you're on an elevator and you're with your friend and this really big guy gets on and you and your friend look at each other and you're like, "DAAAMN!" But you still let the big guy ride your elevator. That's the difference. Level six, you see walking towards your elevator, [Deep growling noise] [Pretends to be a shocked passenger and starts pushing the "close door" button. ] "OH HELL NO!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Pretends to kick the fat man out] That's the difference. The guy that I met was six foot eight, six hundred and fourteen pounds. Uh-huh, OH HELL NO!! And he was offended at my show. Not by anything that I said, but because of the fact that now at the shows I started selling T-shirts and apparently, I didn't have his size. Keep in mind, I go all the way up to 5X on the T-shirts and he was like, [Deep growling voice] "You don't have my size." I was like, "Dude, I didn't know they MADE you! I have up to 5X, I don't have [Growl] X!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

A picture of a dinosaur on the back of the tag, you know?
I'm Not Fat, I'm Fluffy (2009)

People , Way , Guy , Hell

“"But we've got passengers aboard," our skipper shouted through the darkness. "Prisoners?" the deck called; with a note of curiosity. "Stand by to bring the prisoners aboard." I climbed a rope ladder up the Augusta's side and crawled over the rail, cold, wet, hungry, and tired. The crew pressed forward to see its "prisoners". "Oh, hell," a sailor grunted, "it's only General Bradley."”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. 278.

Hell

“The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Speech at New York (11 November 1902)
1900s

Help

“The ancient dream of man to fly among the stars and go through the could and look down on the lands and seas has degenerated in its realization to the socialized and apathetic behavior of passengers who hardly look out the windows.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 144.

Dreams , Behavior , Star , Flying

“The next day I was in my car driving along the freeway when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger's side, next to me, was a white man. "Malcolm X!" he called out-and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. "Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?" Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, "I don't mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?"”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 418

Cars , Imagination , Light

“While I have not lost faith in its potentialities, my views have changed since. War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only though annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Faith , Understanding , War , Strong

“I'm just a passenger, I'm gonna let you drive me. Anywhere the mood takes you, I'm gonna let you guide me.”

Noemi (1982) Italian singer, screenwriter and music video director

da Passenger
Made in Londom

Mood

“Learn to drive?"
"Never," said Quentin. "My mission in life is to be a passenger.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Archer's Goon

Source: Archer's Goon

Life , Learning

“Because you've got guy parts, you're automatically a better mechanic than me? I don'tso," Eve said, and bailed out of the passenger side.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Fade Out

Guy , Parting

“To the brave crew and passengers of the Kobayshi Maru…sucks to be you.”

Peter David book Stone and Anvil

Source: Stone and Anvil

“Why couldn't she have gotten another Edger or some dimwit from the Broken for a passenger? No, she got Lord Leather Pants here.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Bayou Moon

“I looked out the window for other passengers in love with their drivers, but we were well disguised, we pretended boredom and prayed for traffic.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Love

“The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-à-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Paragraph 23
2006, Letter to George W. Bush, 2006

War , People , Faith , Question

“It is not within our province to inquire by what process, and in what condition the Almighty brought matter into existence-what the space was which it occupied, or what the forms were which it assumed. Of such things we know nothing. In the depths of primeval time, the globe we inhabit may have a planetary existence, wheeling along its ethereal railway without a breathing passenger to count its periods, and without a living plant to measure the day by its opening and closing blossoms, or to mark the rolling seasons by the yearly increments of its stem. Or it may have been the theatre on which vast cycles of animal and vegetable life have been run- now its birthplace, and now its grave: But we have no data to guide us in our conjectures, and even imagination fails us if we call it to our aid. Whatever may have been, had ceased to be at the commencement of our history, when the primary rocks, forming the moten nucleus of the globe, were first exposed to the action of the elements.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

Life , Imagination , History , Time

“A white spot is on the horizon. There it is. A terrible storm is brewing. But no one sees the write spot or has any inkling of what it might mean. But no (this would not be the most terrible situation either), no, there is one person who sees it and knows what it means-but he is a passenger. He has no authority on the ship, can take no action. … The fact that in Christendom there is visible on the horizon a white speck which means that a storm is threatening-this I knew; but, alas, I was an am only a passenger.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers XI3 B 109 p 178ff (quoted in Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth by Gergor Malantschuk 1963 Augsburg Publishing House
1850s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1850s

Personality

“Ah, the immortal ocean.
Consider the instructive metaphor: every conceivable terror dwells in her depths; she receives all wreckage, refuse, corruption of every kind, she pulls down into her depths human calamity indescribable; but none of this is any consideration to the sea. Let the screaming mortal passengers fight for room in the lifeboats, as the wreck belches flame and settles below the extinguishing wave; next morning she’ll still be beautiful and serene, her combers no less white, her distances as blue, her seabirds no less graceful as they wheel in the pure air. What perfection, to be so heartless. An inspiration to any lesser immortal.”

Kage Baker book The Children of the Company

Source: The Children of the Company (2005), Chapter 4, “Son Observe the Time” (p. 165)

Beauty , Fight , Perfection , Sea

“Why pamper life's complexity when the leather runs smooth on the passenger's seat?”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from the 1984 song "This Charming Man"
From songs

Life

“… we have a situation in which millions of vehicles, each a miracle of often unnecssary complication, are hurtling in all directions under the impulse of anything up to 200 horsepower. Many of them are the size of small houses and contain a couple of tons of sophisticated alloys — yet often carry a single passenger. They can travel at a hundred miles an hour, but are lucky if they average forty. In one lifetime they have consumed more irreplaceable fuel than has been used in the whole previous history of mankind. The roads to support them, inadequate though they are, cost as much as a small war; the analogy is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: 1970s, Chapter 3 (The Future of Transport) in Profiles of the Future (7th printing, 1972)

War , Travel , History , Support

“The girl in the passenger seat said she had never before been in “a car like this,” meaning, apparently, a sedan. Richard felt far beyond merely old.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Cars , Girl

“The religion of hinduism says that if you’ve been bad, you may come back as a rat or some other animal. If you’ve been good, you might come back as a prince. But that’s like someone saying, “when you jump out of the plane, you’ll get sucked back in as another passenger. If you’ve been bad, you go down to the Economy Class; if you’ve been good, you go up to First Class.” It’s an interesting concept, but it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

God , Religion , Hell , Problem

“How will the cessation of war purchases of planes, guns, tanks, and ships … affect the national level of employment? How many new jobs will be created by the consumers’demand for an additional one million of passenger cars, how many of these jobs can be expected to be located in the automobile industry itself, and how many in other industries such as Steel and the Chemicals, the Coal and the Petroleum industries? How much additional freight traffic and revenue can the American railroads expect to derive from every billion dollars worth spent on post-war housing construction?”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 141: as cited in: Frits Bos, " Three centuries of macro-economic statistics http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35391/1/Three_centuries_macroeconomic_statistics.pdf." (2011).

War , Cars , Housing

“Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Home , Science , Waiting

“I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.”

Daniel Handler book The Beatrice Letters

The Beatrice Letters (2006)

Love

“Those who died in the attack were not simply humans: they were Americans; and not ordinary Americans, either, but the priests and priestesses of the supreme God of this age: the Dollar. The passengers of the domestic flights are not a valid sample of humanity either, but a wealthy, busy, environmentally damaging and world-devouring portion of mankind.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Can Life Prevail?: A Revolutionary Approach to the Environmental Crisis. page 158

God , Age , World , Business

“Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies — unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand — unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation
Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

Law , Nature , Training

“I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away, and my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

On the Missouri Compromise, in a letter to John Holmes (22 April 1820), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816-1826 (1899) edited by Paul Leicester Ford, v. 10, p. 157; also quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address http://www.nps.gov/anti/historyculture/mlk-ep.htm at the New York Civil War Centennial Commission’s Emancipation Proclamation Observance, New York City (12 September 1962)
1820s

Confidence , Question , Distant , Time

“The swift victory of the railway over the waterway resulted from organizational as well as technological innovation. Technology made possible fast, all-weather transportation; but safe, regular, reliable movement of goods and passengers, as well as the continuing maintenance and repair of locomotives, rolling stock, and track, roadbed, stations, roundhouses and other equipment, required the creation of a sizable administrative organization. It meant the employment of an administrative command of middle and top executives to monitor, evaluate, and coordinate the work of managers responsible for the day-to-day operations. It meant, too, the formulation of brand new types of internal administrative procedures and accounting and statistical controls. Hence, the operational requirements of the railroads demanded the creation of the first administrative hierarchies in American business.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 87.

Business , Victory , Weather

“Once again he began to feel bad in the best of environments. And he noticed that other people did too. So bad did they feel, in fact, that it took the worst of news to cheer them up. On the finest mornings he noticed that people in the subway looked awful until they opened their newspapers and read of some airliner crashing and killing all hundred and seven passengers. Where there had been misery in their happiness, now as they shook their heads dolefully at the tragedy they became happy in their misery.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

People , Feeling , Reading , Happiness

“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 4 (16 July 1902)

Travel , Business , Sport , Training

“But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible. Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men , People , World , Fear

“What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides of the boat.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

The Doctrine Of Survival And Doctor Ethics (1992)

Love , Life , Hate , People

“I sought trains; I found passengers.”

Paul Theroux book The Great Railway Bazaar

Source: The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), Ch. 1.

Training

“And Spaceship Earth, that glorious and bloody circus, continued its four-billion-year-long spiral orbit about the Sun; the engineering, I must admit, was so exquisite that none of the passengers felt any motion at all. Those on the dark side of the ship mostly slept and voyaged into worlds of freedom and fantasy; those on the light side moved about the tasks appointed for them by their rulers, or idled waiting for the next order from above.”

Robert Anton Wilson book The Illuminatus! Trilogy

The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975)

World , Freedom , Light , Waiting

“When the train of history makes a sharp turn, said Lenin, the passengers who do not have a good grip on their seats are thrown off. Last week the Communist Limited had just about completed the dizzy turn from the Communazi Pact to the Battle of Britain, and U. S. literary liberals were spattered all over the right of way.”

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) Defected Communist spy

"Revolt of the Intellectuals," January 6, 1941
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

Way , History , Training

“A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Smile , Tear , Light , Silence

“The amazing part of the great Danish cartoon caper isn't that Muslims immediately engage in acts of mob violence when things don't go their way. That is de rigueur for the Religion of Peace. Their immediate response to all bad news is mass violence. That's a "dog bites man" story and belongs on page B-34, next to the grade school hot lunch menu and the birth notices. After an Egyptian ferry capsized recently, killing hundreds of passengers, a whole braying mob of passengers' relatives staged an organized attack on the company, throwing furniture out the window and burning the building to the ground. Witnesses say it was the most violent ocean liner-related incident since Carnival Cruise Lines fired Kathie Lee Gifford. The "offense to Islam" ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Muslim Bites Dog" (15 February 2006) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=100.
2006

School , Peace , Religion , Dogs

“Heathrow the next morning looked like one of those bad science fiction movies "set in the near future" after the security forces have taken over the state. Two armored personnel carriers were parked outside the terminal. A dozen men with Rambo machine guns and bad haircuts patrolled outside. Vast lines of passengers queued to be frisked and X-rayed, carrying their shoes in one hand and their pathetic tolietries in a clear plastic bag in the other. Travel is sold as freedom, but we were free as lab rats. This is how they'll manage the next holocaust, I thought, as I shuffled forward in my stockinged feet: they'll simply issue us with air tickets and we'll do whatever we're told.”

Robert Harris book The Ghost

Source: The Ghost (2007), Ch. 3.

Men , Shoe , Travel , Freedom

“(Sylvia driving to nervous passenger Venusian Gernif) Don't be silly. You're not going to be the first interplanetary traveler to die in a Chevy.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 134

Travel

“The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

Some Reflections on the Present State of the Nation (1753)

Men , Money

“The idea of a terrorist attack that assaults innocent human beings in a building or a mall or a restaurant is bad enough. Yet the terrorist mind that looks at a passenger plane and sees the fuel and the intensity of the blast, and sees the rocket engines that will carry it into the heart of destruction like a cruise missile, but who does not see the humanity of one single soul on that airplane, is the chilling truth of what we're up against.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Black America's Political Action Committee (BAMPAC), September 25, 2001. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/01_09_25bampac.htm.
2009

Truth , Soul , Idea , Heart

“We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled history with their deeds, and the earth with their renown. And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human ambition to see how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; what parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty nook, a gloomy corner, a little portion of earth, to those whom, when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy, and how many shapes and forms and artifices are devised to catch the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetfulness for a few short years a name which once aspired to occupy ages of the world's thought and admiration.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Westminster Abbey".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Men , Age , World , Smile

“The tenement – the name derives from a fifteenth-century legal term for a multiple dwelling – always seemed to me a “ship afloat in concrete.” After all didn’t the building carry passengers on a voyage through life? No. 55 sat at the corner of Dropsie avenue near the elevated train, or the elevated as we called it in those days. It was a treasure house of stories that illustrated tenement life as I remembered it, stories that needed to be told before they faded from memory. Within its “railroad flats,” with rooms strung together train-like lived low-paid city employees or laborers and their turbulent families. Most were recent immigrants, intent n their own survival. They kept busy raising children and dreaming of the better lie they knew existed “uptown.” Hallways were filled with a rich stew of cooking aromas, sounds of arguments and the tinny wail from Victrolas. What community spirit there was stemmed from the common hostility of tenants to the landlord or his surrogate superintendent. Typically, the buildings tenants came and went with regularity, depending on the vagaries of their fortunes But many remained for a lifetime, imprisoned by poverty or old age. There was no real privacy or anonymity. Everybody knew about everybody. Human dramas, both good and bad, instantly gathered witness like ants swarming around a piece of dropped food. From window to window or on the stoop below, the tenants analyzed, evaluated and critiqued each happening, following an obligatory admission that it was really none of their business.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XV-XVI, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Life , Hostility , Children , Lie

“When you drive a car, when you're the driver, you know what to do. When you go 100 mph in Venezuela, you know what to do. The people in the passenger seat can be scared, but the guy driving the car is not scared. It's the same way on the mound.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Author Unknown, Chi Cubs 4, Houston 1 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=260720116, Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 16, 2007
2006

People , Cars , Way , Guy

“Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon”, p. 109.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Spring , Heart , Housing , Clothes

“Indian Railways is the responsibility of Lord Vishwakarma. So is the safety of passengers… It is His duty, not mine. I have been forced to don His mantle.”

Lalu Prasad Yadav (1948) Indian politician

Reacting to increasing number of train mishaps, Patna ([Boarding a train? Pray to God, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/761797.cms, The Times of India, July 02, 2004, 2006-05-08]).

“He seemed to lose interest in the subject of his daughter, glooming at a yellow card of ancient railway regulations on the wall. But when the harbingers of the coming train were audible – porters trundling, a scrambled gabble from the station announcer, frantic blowing on hot tea – he became eager again and was out swiftly on to the platform. I followed him. The train slid in. I saw the driver look down disdainful from his cosy hell, sharing – like soldier and auxiliary – a mystique with the tea-room woman. Passengers, disillusioned with arrival, got out greyly amid grey steam; passengers, hungry for the illusion of getting somewhere, jostled their way on.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Way , Hell , Tea , Daughters

“According to the orthodox creeds, Christianity came with the tidings that the human race was totally depraved, and that all men were in a lost condition, and that all who rejected or failed to believe the new religion, would be tormented in eternal fire. These were not “tidings of great joy.” If the passengers on some great ship were told that the ship was to be wrecked, that a few would be saved and that nearly all would go to the bottom, would they talk about “tidings of great joy”?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Men , Religion , Joy

“Referring to a professor aboard ship: This passenger — the first and only one we had had, except to go from port to port on the coast — was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my smoother days, and the last person I should have expected to see on the coast of California — Professor Nuttall of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of the Botany and Ornithology Department at Harvard University, and the next I saw of him, he was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailors' pea jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells… I was often amused to see the sailors puzzled to know what to make of him, and to hear their conjectures about him and his business… The Pilgrim's crew called Mr. Nuttall "Old Curious," from his zeal for curiosities; and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself this way. Why else would (he)… come to such a place as California to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, who had seen something more of the world ashore said, "Oh, 'vast there!… I've seen them colleges and know the ropes. They keep all such things for cur'osities, and study 'em, and have men a purpose to go and get 'em… He'll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he'll be head of the college. Then, by and by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him he'll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That's the way they do it. This old covery knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over 'em, and come 'way out here where nobody's ever been afore, and where they'll never think of coming."”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. Nuttall's credit, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it.
Source: Two Years Before the Mast (1840), p. 267

Men , Truth , World , Way

“A Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the State and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. He does not object, nor, perhaps, would he object to separate coaches for his race if his rights under the law were recognized. But he objecting, and ought never to cease objecting, to the proposition that citizens of the white and black race can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway.”

John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) United States Union Army officer and Supreme Court Associate Justice

1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Law

“The other passengers gazed at each other and there was established that silent solidarity of those who secretly hope to God that the plane will not fall. p264”

Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) Brazilian writer

God , Hope

“Anarcharsis, on learning that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, said that "the passengers were just that distance from death."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Anarcharsis, 5.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Death , Learning

“If two classes express the same information, the most descriptive name should be kept. For example, although customer might describe a person taking an airline ﬂight, Passenger is more descriptive.”

James Rumbaugh (1947) Computer scientist, software engineer

Source: Object-oriented modeling and design (1990), p. 153; as cited in: Roger Chiang, ‎Keng Siau, ‎Bill C. Hardgrave (2009) Systems Analysis and Design. p. 163

Personality

“On commercial airlines, at takeoff the flight attendants instruct passengers in the use of oxygen masks, reminding them to secure their own masks before assisting others. In the same way, to be effective spiritual warriors we must protect ourselves first. Otherwise we are of no use to anyone. The greatest protection of all comes from our unconditional, unmotivated, uninterrupted devotional service. Such service opens us up to a flow of divine love and protection in all circumstances.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume III: Solace for the Heart in Difficult Times (Hari-Nama Press, 2000), Chapter 8 - How To Strengthen Ourselves

Love , Way

“On airlines, so many passengers' faces are buried in John Grisham books, they could be complimentary copies for Grisham Airlines.”

Kate Clinton (1947) American comedian

Don't Get Me Started

Books

“As we made the high point off San Diego, Point Loma, we were greeted by the cheering presence of a lighthouse. As we swept round it in the early morning, there, before us, lay the little harbor of San Diego, its low spit of sand, where the water runs so deep; the opposite flats, where the Alert grounded in starting for home; the low hills, without trees, and almost without brush; the quiet little beach; but the chief objects, the hide houses, my eye looked for in vain. They were gone, all, and left no mark behind. I wished to be alone, so I let the other passengers go up to the town, and was quietly pulled ashore in a boat, and left to myself. The recollections and the emotions were all sad… and only sad.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Sadness , Home , Tree , Water

“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”

Dionysius Lardner (1793–1859) Irish science writer

While widely quoted as an example of failed predictions about technological progress and attributed to Lardner, there are no known citations of this line prior to 1980 and it does not seem to appear in his published works. It may result from the conflation, through imperfect memory and oral transmission, of reference to three separate concepts: the real, and at the time new, danger of suffocation by engine combustion gasses in tunnels (and in particular an 1861 incident http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=202 in the Blisworth Tunnel), the hypothetical (and unfounded) fear of suffocation by vacuum in a speculated system of trains propelled by pneumatic force https://books.google.com/books?id=2Tc1AQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA261&ots=lL3eBeyoex&dq=lardner%20train%20speed%20suffocation&pg=PA261#v=onepage&q=Lardner&f=false, and Lardner's erroneous prediction of mechanical failure of trains in the Box Tunnel of the Great Western Railway from over-acceleration due to excess gradient.
Misattributed

Travel , Speed

“The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.

And even the books that do not last long, penetrate their own times at least, sailing farther than Ulysses even dreamed of, like ships on the seas. It is the author’s part to call into being their cargoes and passengers,—living thoughts and rich bales of study and jeweled ideas. And as for the publishers, it is they who build the fleet, plan the voyage, and sail on, facing wreck, till they find every possible harbor that will value their burden.”

Clarence Day (1874–1935) American writer

The Story of the Yale University Press Told by a Friend (1920), pp. 7–8.

Men , Books , World , Dreams

“There is usually no ressentiment just where a superficial view would look for it first: in the criminal. The criminal is essentially an active type. Instead of repressing hatred, revenge, envy, and greed, he releases them in crime. Ressentiment is a basic impulse only in the crimes of spite. These are crimes which require only a minimum of action and risk and from which the criminal draws no advantage, since they are inspired by nothing but the desire to do harm. The arsonist is the purest type in point, provided that he is not motivated by the pathological urge of watching fire (a rare case) or by the wish to collect insurance. Criminals of this type strangely resemble each other. Usually they are quiet, taciturn, shy, quite settled and hostile to all alcoholic or other excesses. Their criminal act is nearly always a sudden outburst of impulses of revenge or envy which have been repressed for years. A typical cause would be the continual deflation of one's ego by the constant sight of the neighbor's rich and beautiful farm. Certain expressions of class ressentiment, which have lately been on the increase, also fall under this heading. I mention a crime committed near Berlin in 1912: in the darkness, the criminal stretched a wire between two trees across the road, so that the heads of passing automobilists would be shorn off. This is a typical case of ressentiment, for any car driver or passenger at all could be the victim, and there is no interested motive. Also in cases of slander and defamation of character, ressentiment often plays a major role...”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility , Alcohol , Beauty , Cars

“Steward (Spade): [sarcastically ushering passangers off of the plane] Buh-bye. Buh-bye. Buh-Bye [to a fat passanger]Buh-bye. You're very heavy.
Fat Passanger (Chris Farley): What did you say?
Steward: I said buh-bye! I just said buh-bye 40 times in a row why would I say anything else? It doesn't make sense! Did I just say something without knowing it? No! Go! Buh-bye!

Passenger (Adam Sandler): I'm gonna be waiting for you outside in the terminal.
Steward: Great, buh-bye.
Passenger: No, no, no, there's more. I'm gonna pound your face in.
Steward: Okay, Slick. Buh-bye!
Passenger: I'm gonna destroy you!
Steward: Buh-BYE!
Passenger: I am gonna KICK THE CRAP OUTTA YOU!
Steward: YEAH?! BUH-BYE!”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

Saturday Night Live

Sense , Time , Waiting

“The worst of all of this is the lie that condoms really protect against AIDS. The condom failure rate can be as high as 20 percent. Would you get on a plane — or put your children on a plane — if one of five passengers would be killed on the flight? Well, the statistic holds for condoms, folks.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

[The Way Things Ought to Be, Pocket Books, October 1992, 134, 978-0671751456, 92028659, 26397008, 1724938M]

Children , Lie , Failure

“This way, gentlemen, if you please. Come right on board the Declaration. I am the man from Oregon, with dispatches to the President of these United States, that you all read about in this morning's paper. Come on board, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to hear the news from Oregon. I've just come across the plains, two months from the Columbia River, where the Injuns are killing your missionaries. Those passengers who come aboard the Declaration shall hear all about it before they get to Pittsburg. Don't stop thar, looking at my old wolf-skin cap, but just come aboard, and hear what I've got to tell!”

Joseph Meek (1810–1875) American mountain man, pioneer of the Oregon Country, politician

as quoted in Frances Fuller Victor's Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier

Way , Wolf , Reading

“Putin’s proxy army was almost certainly guilty of killing the passengers on the Malaysia Airlines jet that came down in eastern Ukraine. He has questions to answer about the death of Alexander Litvinenko, pitilessly poisoned in a London restaurant. As for his reign in Moscow, he is allegedly the linchpin of a vast post-Soviet gangster kleptocracy, and is personally said to be the richest man on the planet. Journalists who oppose him get shot. His rivals find themselves locked up. Despite looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf, he is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"Let’s deal with the Devil: we should work with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad in Syria" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/12036184/Lets-deal-with-the-Devil-we-should-work-with-Vladimir-Putin-and-Bashar-al-Assad-in-Syria.html, The Telegraph (05 Dec 2015)
2010s, 2015

Death , Question , Housing , Personality

“We are taught by biology to believe that the organism carries no passengers, but only members of the crew, each with an allotted part in keeping the ship afloat and bringing it to port.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

The Integrity of the Intellect (July 1920)

Parting

“Our fellow passenger was Major Grogan, who thirty years before had been the first white man to go from the Cape to Cairo. It took him three years, one whole year in the marshes of the Sudd; his two companions died. It is said he ate them; I think so. He looked like a sensible man.”

James Tiptree, Jr (1915–1987) American science fiction writer

As quoted in "James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon" (2006) by Julie Phillips

Thinking

“[about travelling by train]"Please let the passengers off the train first." British people have an amazing ability to let people off a train whilst at all times, moving forwards.”

Michael McIntyre (1976) British comedian

Live at the Apollo (November 26, 2007)

People , Travel , Time , Training

“Some of our German passengers on the ship would be crying. The Brits were the same way. They were crying, because they realized a new war was about to break out across Europe, with Hitler at the head of the goose-stepping parade.”

Frank Buckles (1901–2011) United States Army soldier and centenarian

Problems prior to WWII.
Knoxville News.

War , Way , Cry

“Fifteen minutes out of Mexico City for Tokyo a passenger aboard a 747 screamed that he was being eaten by red-hot ants, and managed to open the emergency door at 23,000 feet. He had been to the washroom and drunk from the faucet there before takeoff.
It was, after all, labeled DRINKING WATER.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

July “BLOWBACK”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Drink , Water

“On one side, lemons are selling for a shilling a dozen; on the other, oranges for sixpence. One man blows a horn in your ear, and offers you the Standard; another exerts his lungs, and shews you the Courier. Pencils are to be had for a penny; and penknives, with from three to six blades each, for eighteen pence a-dozen. A fellow with a trunk turns its corner on your temples; another deposits a box, with the grocery of a family —sugar, soap, candles, and all—on your toes. A gigantic gentleman nearly knocks you down in his hurry; and an elderly Jew slips past you so neatly, that you tumble over him before you are aware. Every body is always too late, and therefore every body is in a bustle. Two policemen keep the peace; and half-a-dozen individuals, whose notions on the law of property are at variance with established principles or prejudices, attend for the purpose of breaking it. Add to these some females with shawls and sharp elbows; and pattens, whose iron rings are for the benefit of foot-passengers. Such is the White Horse Cellar, and the pavement from Dover Street to Albemarle Street.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Family , Peace , Law , Past

“Today's American bemoans the extermination of the passenger pigeon and the threatened extinction of the whooping crane and the ivory billed woodpecker; he contributes to conservation organizations that seek to preserve the Hawaiian goose, the sea otter of the Aleutian Islands, the lizard of the Galapágos Islands… But who ever shed a tear over the loss of the native American cultures?”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

1st edition
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Tear , Loss , Sea

“He walked down the side street to a wide thoroughfare of shop-windows and offices. This, he assumed, was one of the main arteries of London, a city he did not know very well. There were sodium street-lights, lights in windows. Occasional cars sped by. There was even an airline bus crammed with yawning passengers. Edwin saw himself reflected in a window full of tape-recorders.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Doctor is Sick (1960)

Cars , Light

“[Describing the bazar held in Delhi near the Red Fort, Francois Bernier (seventeenth century) says that] “Hither, likewise, the astrologers resort, both Mahometan and Gentile. These wise doctors remain seated in the sun, on a dusty piece of carpet, handling some old mathematical instruments, and having open before them a large book which represents the sign of the Zodiac. In this way they attract the attention of the passenger… by whom they are considered as so many infallible oracles. They tell a poor person his fortune for a payssa… Silly women, wrapping themselves in a white cloth from head to foot, flock to the astrologers, whisper to them all the transaction of their lives, and disclose every secret with no more reserve than is practised by a penitent in the presence of her confessor. The ignorant and infatuated people really believe that the stars have an influence (on their lives) which the astrologers can control.””

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Women , People , Secret , Books

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

As quoted in Women's Words : The Columbia Book of Quotations by Women (1996) by Mary Biggs, p. 2

Training

“We are all fellow passengers on a dot of earth. And each of us, in the span of time, has really only a moment among our companions. How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)

Hate , World , Way , Nature

“We are passengers, comprehended and displaced by metaphor.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 8, Performative Reflexivity, p. 137

“To the right I see the forces which lead to dystopia. It is the big corporation which built the tower on top of the small hill which tells me: "Fly ABC Fortresses!" Airplanes have to be built like fortresses to avoid skyjacking attacks by the passengers.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 23, The great dystopia of 1984, p. 298

Flying

“…I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all colour out of storybooks and fairy tales. Wasn't it just a storybook over which I had fallen a-doze and a-dream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half replaced and half utilised, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw (1898), Ch. I.

Dreams , Idea , Housing

“To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.”

Lee De Forest (1873–1961) American inventor

De Forest Says Space Travel Is Impossible https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KXhfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=my8MAAAAIBAJ&pg=3288,6595098&dq=all-that-constitutes-a-wild-dream-worthy-of-jules-verne&hl=en, Lewiston Morning Tribune via Associated Press, February 25, 1957

Dreams , Future

“Quebec City, Canada: "A rotten priest-ridden community who are the completest passengers & who won't do their bit in anything & of course not during the war!!"”

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (1894–1972) king of the United Kingdom and its dominions in 1936

23 Aug 1919
Around the World with the Prince of Wales

War , Communication

“A few days before Christmas, an airline flight attendant spotted a passenger lighting a match. The crew and passengers quickly subdued the man, who had been trained by al Qaeda and was armed with explosives. The people on that plane were alert and, as a result, likely saved nearly 200 lives. And tonight we welcome and thank flight attendants Hermis Moutardier and Christina Jones.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

People , Light , Christmas , Training

“I rowed stroke and he rowed bow in the famous Long Vacation voyage to Godstow, when the three Miss Liddells were our passengers, and the story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder.”

Robinson Duckworth (1834–1911) British priest

Of the origin of Alice in Wonderland.
The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899), p. 358

“It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jet liner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot’s seat.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

1960s, Soul on Ice (1968)

World , Feeling , Reality , Fight

“From day one his standard operating procedure … was a blend of ignorance, amnesia, and dissembling. Like a panicky passenger lunging for a life preserver, he would, under stress, concoct almost any fact or anecdote to advance his ideological beliefs. Ronald Reagan brought to mind Will Rogers' comment that "It's not what he doesn't know that bothers me, it's what he knows for sure that just ain't so."”

Mark J. Green (1945) American lawyer

Comments on Ronald Reagan, in Reagan's Reign of Error (1987)
see Josh Billings

Life

“Hourly reports are received by telegraph, giving the position of all the passenger and the principal freight trains. In all cases where passenger trains are more than ten minutes, or freight trains more than half-an-hour behind time, on their arrival at a station the conductors are required to report the cause to the operator, who transmits the same by telegraph to the General Superintendent; and the information being entered as fast as received, on a convenient tabular form, shows, at a glance, the position and progress of trains, in both directions, on every Division of the Road.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 51-52 about the "System of reports and checks"; Partly cited in Chandler (1977, p. 103)

Time , Training

“People didn’t fly the Atlantic any more if they could help it, except from bravado. Even if your plane wasn’t sabotaged or hijacked, it was certain to be behind schedule.
Not that there was much to be said for ocean travel either, since the sinking of the Paolo Rizzi last summer and the drowning of thirteen hundred passengers in a sea made foul by a hundred and eighty thousand tons of oil from the tanker she’d collided with.
Moral, definitely: stay home.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

March “RAVELED SLEEVE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

People , Travel , Home , Help

“We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

The Dallas Morning News staff (July 28, 1986) "People", The Dallas Morning News, p. 2A.

“For me, the Big Ride. You start when you’re born. You climb on the toboggan and then you’re off. But you can only have the one ride. No use telling the ticket-taker you want to go again. They shovel you under at the end of the slope and there’s a new lot of passengers waiting. You’ve had your three-score and ten. And it’s over.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Source: The Time Axis (1949), Ch. 1 : Encounter In Rio

Waiting

“Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

"Grass" (1918)
Context: p>Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?</p

“The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done”

John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) United States Union Army officer and Supreme Court Associate Justice

1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Context: If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.

“We can think back no further than July of 1996, when a plane carrying several hundred people suddenly and mysteriously crashed off the coast of Long Island. Within days, Congress had passed emergency legislation calling for costly new security measures, including a controversial “screening” method which calls for airlines to arbitrarily detain passengers just because the person meets certain criteria which border on racist and xenophobic.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Emotion should never dictate policy https://web.archive.org/web/20120119215614/http://www.ronpaularchive.com/1998/01/emotion-should-never-dictate-policy/ (January 12, 1998).
Press conference regarding the impeachment of President Clinton, 1998.
1990s
Context: In the emotion of the moment, people often say and do reckless things. For the individual, that can have deep ramifications. But when it is a single individual acting unreasonably in the throes of emotion in the face of sorrow, then the consequences are borne by only that person and his family. But when the government behaves recklessly in response to a tragedy, the consequences can be felt by everyone. This is especially true when politicians get in on the act. We can think back no further than July of 1996, when a plane carrying several hundred people suddenly and mysteriously crashed off the coast of Long Island. Within days, Congress had passed emergency legislation calling for costly new security measures, including a controversial “screening” method which calls for airlines to arbitrarily detain passengers just because the person meets certain criteria which border on racist and xenophobic.

People , Thinking , Personality

“He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Short Drive, Sweet Chariot (1966)
Context: When I was fifteen and had quit school forever, I went to work in a vineyard near Sanger with a number of Mexicans, one of whom was only a year or two older than myself, an earnest boy named Felipe. One gray, dismal, cold, dreary day in January, while we were pruning muscat vines, I said to this boy, simply in order to be talking, "If you had your wish, Felipe, what would you want to be? A doctor, a farmer, a singer, a painter, a matador, or what?" Felipe thought a minute, and then he said, "Passenger." This was exciting to hear, and definitely something to talk about at some length, which we did. He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.

“There were five thousand or ten thousand killed and, counting all those passengers in those airplanes, it's very likely that every last single one of them was a fag or dyke or a fag enabler, and that the minute he died, he split hell wide open”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, God Hates America (2001)
Context: How many do you suppose of those hundred in the Pentagon last Tuesday were fags and dykes? And how many do you suppose were working in that massively composed building structure called those two World Trade Center buildings, Twin Towers? There were five thousand or ten thousand killed and, counting all those passengers in those airplanes, it's very likely that every last single one of them was a fag or dyke or a fag enabler, and that the minute he died, he split hell wide open, and the way to analyze the situation is that the Lord God Almighty, pursuant to His threatenings and warnings, killed him, looked him in the face, laughed and mocked at each one of them as He cast each one of them into Hell!

Hell