The car has become… an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete. – Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic. – James Marston Fitch, New York Times, 1 May 1960

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. – Mary Ellen Kelly