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.
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.
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.
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
Have done Naly, ta
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.
‘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.