Today, NZ Herald go-to curmudgeon Garth George rails against John Key’s proposed national cycleway. Sandwiched between heart-rending tales of being forced to ride a bike to school and smug reference to his “warm, dry, powerful motor car” are six quotes about cycling.
I tweeted that Garth probably had wiki quote open while thundering out his column. I was wrong.
But I *did* find five of the six quotes Garth padded his bluster out with on Quotegarden’s cycling page, which is the first result when you type ‘cycling quote’ into Google.
So, I present the following table just so we’re clear where Garth got his material for today’s column from:
| Garth George quotes from Google’s first hit on ‘cycling quote’
The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. – John Howard You never have the wind with you – either it is against you or you’re having a good day. – Daniel Behrman It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. – Ernest Hemingway Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. – H.G. Wells Get a bicycle. You will not regret it – if you live. – Mark Twain |
Garth George quotes from somewhere else
If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it. – Maria Louise Rame
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So, sportreview.net.nz apologies to Garth for thinking he was a wikiquote man instead of a first-result-on-Google kind of guy.
‘top notch investigative journalism’
First and last time that’ll EVER appear on this site – thanks James!
My personal #1 quote is still never ever bloody anything ever. I’ve lived my life by that rule.
That’s some top notch investigative journalism there, Richard. I’m honestly disappointed in GG – I thought he was old school and, in my mind’s eye, I saw him, if not pulling the quotes from his memory in the style of a Stephen Fry, at least tracking them down in a leather-bound tome in his musty library.
Sigh. My illusions are shattered. But, as Nietzsche said, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That one I remember off by heart.
Have done Naly, ta 🙂
The leaves the door open for the first quote I learnt at university. Written inside Introduction to Journalism:
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. – Oscar Wilde
You should let Editing the Herald know about this one Richard
Har. That’s a great site alright.
There’s a bit on an old Simpsons where Grandpa is somehow wrestling an Aligator stuck in Homer’s loo saying ‘I bet you’d like a piece of me!’ That bit rules.
I googled “old man quotes” and found this excellent repository of Old Man Simpson quotes.
Unfortunately they’re all too funny for Old Man George to pass off as his own.