Canals Quotes

Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighborhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.

Among the means of advancing the public interest the occasion is a proper one for recalling the attention of Congress to the great importance of establishing throughout our country the roads and canals which can best be executed under the national authority. No objects within the circle of political economy so richly repay the expense bestowed on them; there are none the utility of which is more universally ascertained and acknowledged

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

The greatness of the Erie Canal is the American equal only of its equality and liberty.

The city is as large as Seville or Cordova; its streets, I speak of the principal ones, are very wide and straight; some of these, and all the inferior ones, are half land and half water, and are navigated by canoes.

America’s history is the history of her transportation.

Elsewhere in Italy is the lovely city of Venice, which each year attracts millions of visitors despite the fact that it is basically an enormous open sewer.

Venice is all sea and sculpture.

… a people occupied as we are in opening rivers, digging navigable canals, making roads

I do not object to the construction of rail roads and canals.

Let us then bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.

Other interests of high importance will claim attention, among which the improvement of our country by roads and canals, proceeding always with a constitutional sanction, holds a distinguished place. By thus facilitating the intercourse between the States we shall add much to the convenience and comfort of our fellow-citizens, much to the ornament of the country, and, what is of greater importance, we shall shorten distances, and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other, we shall bind the Union more closely together.

We landed, in fact, parallel to a canal, like there were two runways: one for us and one for waterfowl.

Banks may be considered as the primary source of "paper speculation," and only the foster the spirit of gambling in paper, in lands, in canal schemes, town lot schemes, manufacturing schemes and whatever could hit the madness of the day.

What repeated follies are those repeated wars! You do not want to conquer and govern one another. Why, then, should you be continually employed in injuring and destroying one another? How many excellent things might have been done to promote the internal welfare of each country; what bridges, roads, canals, and other useful public works and institutions, tending to the common felicity, might have been made and established with the money and men foolishly spent during the last seven centuries by our mad wars in doing one another mischief! You are near neighbors, and each have very respectable qualities. Learn to be quiet and to respect each other's rights. You are all Christians.

If God had wanted these two rivers to be navigable, he could have effected it simply by a fiat, and it would be an infringement of the rights of providence to improve that which, for reasons not to be understood, it had wished to remain imperfect.

I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity.

Venice is the prettiest city I've ever seen. It looks like a Disneyland ride.

What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.

I just got back from Switzerland, which I've never been to. I went to Switzerland and Amsterdam.

She's as plastic as you are. If you ever have kids, they'll come out of the birth canal with Fisher-Price stamped on their butts.

The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking-glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real.

I'll talk about the Everglades at the drop of a hat.

[On Venice:] A wondrous city of fairest carving, reflected in gleaming waters swirled to new patterning by every passing gondola.

Although the power to regulate commerce does not give a power to build piers, wharves, open ports, clear the beds of rivers, dig canals, build warehouses, build manufacturing machines, set up manufactories, cultivate the earth, to all of which the power would go if it went to the first, yet a power to provide and maintain a navy is a power to provide receptacles for it, and places to cover and preserve it