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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.
--Ernest Hemingway
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
Get a bicycle. You will certainly not regret it, if you live.
--Mark Twain
Suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind -- your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work."
-- Mark Twain, Taming the Bicycle
When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.
--H.G. Wells
After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow. ~
-- H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance
Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.
--H.G. Wells
Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
-- H.G. Wells , New York World, February 2, 1896
I came out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs; I never look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view - get hot, juicy, red - like a grilled chop. Get me on that machine and I have to go. I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for doing it.
-- H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance
I thought of that while riding my bicycle.
-- Albert Einstein
When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.
- John F. Kennedy
Next to a leisurely walk I enjoy a spin on my tandem bicycle. It is splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of my iron steed. The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulse dance and my heart sing.
- Helen Keller, author and blind-rights advocate
I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy.
-- Leo Tolstoy, on his bike."
O'Rourke's sometimes amusing, sometimes mean-spirited campaign against the bicycle is well-documented. Here is a summary of his problems with bikes; odd how many of them are the very reasons each of us ride....
The Principle Arguments That May be Marshaled Against Bicycles:
1. Bicycles are childish.
2. Bicycles are undignified.
3. Bicycles are unsafe.
4. Bicycles are un-American.
5. I don't like the kind of people who ride bicycles.
6. Bicycles are unfair.
7. Bicycles are good exercise.
Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.
- P.J. O'Rourke
Other Bike Related Quotes and Musings
Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.
--James E. Starrs
What do you call a cyclist who doesn't wear a helmet? An organ donor.
--David Perry
The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine.
--John Howard
Bicycles are the indicator species of a community, like shellfish in a bay.
-- P. Martin Scott
The bicycle is the vehicle of a new mentality. It quietly challenges a system of values which condones dependency, waste, inequality of mobility, and daily carnage. . . There is every reason why cycling should be helped to enjoy another Golden Age."
-- James McGurn, Worldwatch Institute
Cycling satisfies so many needs. If you're in a gregarious mood, you can go out with a group. OR you can go alone- solo. If you're in an aggressive mood, you can go fast, or if you're tired and want to unwind you can go slow. A bicycle doesn't discriminate in age, either.
- Georgena Terry
Just as the ideal of classic Greek culture was the most perfect harmony of mind and body, so a human and a bicycle are the perfect synthesis of body and machine.
- Richard Ballantine
Bicycles are social catalysts that attract a superior category of people. - Chip Brown, "A Bike and a Prayer"
Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity.
- Lord Charles Beresford Miscellaneous
The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community.
--- Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895
I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all earn to ride, or fall into the sluiceways of oblivion and despair. That which made me succeed with the bicycle was precisely what had gained me a measure of success in life -- it was the hardihood of spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of will that held me to my task, and the patience that was willing to begin again when the last stroke had failed. And so I found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or creed.
- Frances E. Willard, How I Learned To Ride the Bicycle, 1895
Tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life.
- Frances E. Willard, How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle
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.
- Ouida, The Ugliness of Modern Life, 1900
Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers- those people ride a bike.
- Wolfgang Sachs, For the Love of the Automobile
The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.
- Christopher Morley, novelist, and writer of The Romany Stain
Bicycle riding as little as three miles a day will improve your sex life.
- Dr. Franco Antonini
Cyclists are open-minded. Cyclists are egalitarian. Cyclists share a fellowship of the wheel that can overcome all political, social, racial and economic barriers. Except for recumbents.
- Ted Costantino, cycling journalist
Let our people travel light and free on their bicycles.
- Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Don't buy upgrades; ride up grades.
- Eddy Merckx
Government must help to eliminate cars so that bicycles can help to eliminate government.
- Advocacy slogan in Holland
Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There is something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out in a gym.
- Bill Nye, scientist and producer of public TV science programs
The bicycle enables us to escape many other machines: We use it for transportation, sport, recreation, and make it a way of life.
- Jobst Brandt, famous wheel builder, and author of The Bicycle Wheel
Bicycling is human scale- a living, breathing alternative to the city's domination by motor vehicles. There is magic in blending with traffic, feeling the wind in one's face, the sheer fact of traversing the city under one's own power.
- Charles Komanoff, cycling advocate
For city bicycling to catch on we need a revolution in our society's infrastructure. Right now a city rider needs to be a road warrior, and the bike needs to be cheap and ugly so it won't get stolen. That's not a bike friendly culture.
- Gary Fisher, founder and CEO of Fisher Bicycles Riding
City riding is a continual lesson in feminine principles, in particular the art of being vulnerable. A confrontational, macho aesthetic spells calamity. You must learn to yield, to dodge, to seek harmony. You are obliged to mind the web of interrelations; that complicated mesh of interests, conflicts, and intentions. - Chip Brown, essayist, and author of "A Bike and a Prayer"
A road rider who is unpracticed is merely an athlete on a bike, half-educated, a pedaler- not a complete cyclist.
- Maynard Hershon, cycling journalist (visit our Effective Cycling web pages!)
Nobody ever died from not knowing how to play flag football. Yet we spend tax money teaching kids its nuances in gym classes, while bicycle safety is still foreign to most school curriculums. That isn't right.
- Don Cuerdon, cycling journalist who uses the pen name "Captain Dondo"
A stationary bike for the body is like a fantasy for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it prepares you for an opportunity.
- Unknown
People do not 'drive' cars, they steer them.
People do not 'ride' bicycles, they drive them.
--- A. N. Mouse
One of my favorite things about biking (vs driving): When I used to drive, I always drove with my doors locked. I would play my stereo, and mostly avoid any contact with other drivers on the road (just stayed in my gas-guzzling box.) But now, I ride my bike and oddly enough, I'm less afraid of all those things. And when I am at a stoplight and another cyclist is also there, I usually know their name by the time the light turns green! It’s like all these walls come down and although it seems more dangerous than being in a car, I am less afraid!
--- Joni Mehler, 1995
The world lies right beyond the handlebars of any bicycle that I happen to be on anywhere from New York Bay to the Vallee de Chevreuse. Anywhere is high adventure, the walls come down, the cyclist is a loner, and it is the only way for him to meet other loners. And it works. One seldom exchanges anything but curses or names of insurance companies with another driver, the car inhibits human contacts. The bicycle generates them; bikes talk to each other like dogs, they wag their wheels and tinkle their bells, the riders let their mounts mingle.
--- Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles, Chapter 6
I suppose that was what attracted me to the bicycle right from the start. It is not so much a way of getting somewhere as it is a setting for randomness; it makes every journey an unorganized tour.
--- Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles, Chapter 5
People like to travel: that is why the grass is greener over the fence. We are walkers --- our natural means of travel is to put one foot in front of the other. The bicycle seduces our basic nature by making walking exciting. It lets us take 10-foot strides at 160 paces a minute. That's 20 miles an hour, instead of 4 or 5... It is not only how fast you go --- cars are faster and jet planes faster still. But jet-plane travel is frustrating boredom --- at least the car gives the pictorial illusion of travel. Cycling does it all --- you have the complete satisfaction of arriving because your mind has chosen the path and steered you over it; your eyes have seen it; your muscles have felt it; your breathing, circulatory and digestive systems have all done their natural functions better than ever, and every part of your being knows you have traveled and arrived.
--- John Forester, Effective Cycling, Chapter 22
Especially in the world of bicycling, what goes around comes around.
- Almost anyone could have said this.
The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
- Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green
Life is like a 10 speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.
- C. Schultz
When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.
- Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills
It would not be at all strange if history came to the conclusion that the perfection of the bicycle was the greatest incident of the nineteenth century.
- Author Unknown
When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamoring of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.
- Diane Ackerman
Why should anyone steal a watch when he could steal a bicycle?
- Flann O'Brien
[T]he bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon.
- Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist
A bicycle does get you there and more.... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive. Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat; potholes become personal. And getting there is all the fun.
- Bill Emerson, "On Bicycling," Saturday Evening Post, 29 July 1967
The bicycle had, and still has, a humane, almost classical moderation in the kind of pleasure it offers. It is the kind of machine that a Hellenistic Greek might have invented and ridden. It does no violence to our normal reactions: It does not pretend to free us from our normal environment.
- J.B. Jackson
Messengers and mountain bikers share a common chromosome.
- James Bethea
It is curious that with the advent of the automobile and the airplane, the bicycle is still with us. Perhaps people like the world they can see from a bike, or the air they breathe when they're out on a bike. Or they like the bicycle's simplicity and the precision with which it is made. Or because they like the feeling of being able to hurtle through air one minute, and saunter through a park the next, without leaving behind clouds of choking exhaust, without leaving behind so much as a footstep.
- Gurdon S. Leete
The sound of a car door opening in front of you is similar to the sound of a gun being cocked.
- Amy Webster
Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own.
-Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington
You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're having a good day.
- Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles
The secret to mountain biking is pretty simple. The slower you go the more likely it is you'll crash.
- Julie Furtado
If you ride you know those moments when you have fed yourself into the traffic, felt the hashed-up asphalt rattle in the handlebars, held a lungful of air in a cloud of exhaust. Up ahead there are two parallel buses. With cat's whiskers, you measure the clearance down a doubtful alley. You swing wide, outflank that flower truck. The cross-street yellow light is turning red. You burst off the green like a surfer on a wave of metal. You have a hundred empty yards of Broadway to yourself.
- Chip Brown, "A Bike and a Prayer"
All bicycles weigh fifty pounds. A thirty-pound bicycle needs a twenty-pound lock. A forty-pound bicycle needs a ten-pound lock. A fifty-pound bicycle doesn't need a lock.
- Author Unknown
Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world.
- Grant Petersen
All creatures who have ever walked have wished that they might fly. With highwheelers a flesh and blood man can hitch wings to his feet.
- Karl Kron, Ten Thousand Miles on a Bike
When you hear "car back" - check for "car up"; when you hear "car up", check for "car back". You are most vulnerable when there are cars approaching from both directions.
- Emil E. Seat-Post
All bicycles weigh 50 pounds: A 30 pound bicycle needs a 20 pound lock. A 40 pound bicycle needs a 10 pound lock. A 50 pound bicycle doesn't need a lock.
- Unknown
I love riding with women. There's no snot blowing, spitting, or dirty jokes. Well I guess there is, but it's more fun when you're the one doing it!!
-overheard at a BOMBB Squad (all-women) ride
But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.
HAL 9000
Half of all the parts of a typical bicycle are in the chain.
Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking activists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of God that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The great Satan bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.
- Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, former Iraqi Minister of Information
Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts."
- Naked Gun 2 1/2.