James Howard Kunstler Quotes

White America is tortured by black America's failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety has only gotten worse as a substantial quota of white America loses its own footing in the middle class and plunges into the rough country of joblessness, hopelessness, and government dependency. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The faltering of our suburban living arrangement is probably certain. The response of suburbanites is not. Will they elect maniacs who promise to make America just like it was in 1997? Will there be a desperate attempt to sustain the unsustainable by authoritarian measures? Will the institutions of order and justice fail in the process? ~ James Howard Kunstler

Motion is a great tranquilizer. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The three of us ate a fine supper of grilled trout with sorrel cream sauce, and red potatoes out of Britney's old garden behind the ruins of the Watling place, and watercress sautéed in butter for hardly a moment with a dash of vinegar, and cream custard with wild blackberries for dessert. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess. It bankrupts families and townships. It disables whole classes of decent, normal citizens. It ruins the air we breathe. It corrupts and deadens our spirit. ~ James Howard Kunstler

New York City is finished," he said. "They can't keep order there, and you can't have business without order. It'll take a hundred years to sort things out and get it all going again."
"What do you hear of the U.S. government? I said. "We don't have electricity an hour a month anymore and there's nothing on the air but the preachers anyway."
"Well, I hear that this Harvey Albright pretends to be running things out of Minneapolis now. It was Chicago, but that may have gone by the boards. Congress hasn't met since twelve twenty-one." Ricketts said, using a common shorthand for the destruction of Washington a few days before Christmas some years back. "We're still fighting skirmishes with Mexico. The Everglades are drowning. Trade is becoming next to impossible, from everything I can tell, and business here is drying up. It all seems like a bad dream. The future sure isn't what it used to be, is it?"
"We believe in the future, sir. Only it's not like the world we've left behind," Joseph said.
"How's that?"
"We're building our own New Jerusalem up the river. it's a world made by hand, now, one stone at a time, one board at a time, one hope at a time, one soul at a time. . . ~ James Howard Kunstler

When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Parallel parking is desirable for two reasons: parked cars create a physical barrier and psychological buffer that protects pedestrians on the sidewalk from moving vehicles; and a rich supply of parallel parking can eliminate the need for parking lots, which are extremely destructive of the civic fabric. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The newspaper headlines may shout about global warming, extinctions of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other worldwide catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity that it represents. ~ James Howard Kunstler

I'm serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a 'time out' from technological progress as we know it. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Suburbia is the insidious cartoon of the country house in a cartoon of the country. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The car, is the other connection to the outside world, but to be precise it connects the inhabitants to the inside of the car, not to the outside world per se. The outside world is only an element for moving through, as submarines move through water. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Is a direct connection between suburban sprawl and the spiraling cost of government, and most Americans don't see it yet, including many in government. Likewise, ~ James Howard Kunstler

American cities are not scaled to the energy diet of the future. They have become too large. They're over-scaled. ~ James Howard Kunstler

When they come to chronicle the decline of this civilization," he said, "they're going to wonder why we were debating flag burning, abortion, and broccoli eating instead of the fundamental issues of how we live and use the environment. ~ James Howard Kunstler

As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become
for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Anything goes and nothing matters. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Saudi Arabia is, of course, the keystone of OPEC. Saudi Arabia has had the distinction of remaining stable through all the escalating tumult of recent decades, reliably pumping out its roughly 10 million barrels a day like Bossy the cow in America's oil import barn. ~ James Howard Kunstler

In short, chronological connectivity puts us in touch with the holy. It is at once humbling and exhilarating. I say this as someone who has never followed any formal religious practice. Connection with the past and the future is a pathway that charms us in the direction of sanity and grace. ~ James Howard Kunstler

I suppose people who graduate from very selective and expensive colleges, and receive immense reinforcement from colleagues who preceded them there, develop an inflated sense of their ability to effectively manage things, especially complex things. Many of these young, bright people cannot believe that our creaking and foundering systems won't yield to their managerial tinkering, and the net effect must be to turn them into very cynical careerists with nothing left but personal ladder-climbing and wealth accumulation ... The political left in America makes up in cynical cowardly avarice for all the mendacious stupidity on the political right, so we end up at this moment in history with a perfect blend of every bad impulse in human nature and none of the virtues. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The culture of good place-making, like the culture of farming, or agriculture, is a body of knowledge and acquired skills. It is not bred in the bone, and if it is not transmitted from one generation to the next, it is lost. ~ James Howard Kunstler

It's self-evident that we are going to have permanent problems with oil and gasoline and the prime resources that are needed to run the American suburbs. And we're just not going to be able to run them. You know, it's just unfortunate, it's tragic, but it's the truth. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, Wal-Mart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The American house has been TV-centered for three generations. It is the focus of family life, and the life of the house correspondingly turns inward, away from whatever corresponds beyond its four walls.At the same time, the television if the families chief connection to the world. The physical envelope of the house itself no longer connects their lives to the outside in any active way; rather it seals them from it.The outside world has become an abstraction filtered through television, just as the weather is an abstraction filtered through air conditioning. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Neurologically, people have a need to feel oriented, to know where they are, not just in terms of a compass and not just in terms of geography, but in terms of their culture and history. To be informed about where they're coming from and to have some glimpse towards a hopeful future. ~ James Howard Kunstler

If the Internet exists at all in the future, it will be on a much-reduced scale from what we enjoy today, and all the activities of everyday life are not going to reside on it. ~ James Howard Kunstler

One of the problems with the fiasco of suburbia is that it destroyed our understanding of the distinction between the country and the town, between the urban and the rural. They're not the same thing. ~ James Howard Kunstler

There is no shortage of apologists for the ubiquitous highway crud. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work. A land full of places that are not worth caring about will soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending. ~ James Howard Kunstler

My beef with the alt-fuel people is not the renewable or alt-fuel ideas themselves. Sooner or later, there's no question we're going to have to rely on them. For me, it's an issue of scale. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The popular story is that America was built by immigrants and that, therefore, everything about immigration is good and leads to a more successful society. This narrative is so devoid of historical context that it should embarrass anyone beyond a second-grade education. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Ridicule is the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The immersive ugliness of the built environment in the USA is entropy made visible. It indicates not simple carelessness but a vivid drive toward destruction, decay and death: the stage-set of a literal "death trip," of a society determined to commit suicide. Far from being a mere matter of aesthetics, suburbia represents a compound economic catastrophe, ecological debacle, political nightmare, and spiritual crisis - for a nation of people conditioned to spend their lives in places not worth caring about. ~ James Howard Kunstler

On top of the insult of destroying the geographic places we call home, the chain stores also destroyed people's place in the order of daily life, including the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Generations will soon come into their power feeling differently about themselves than we do now, and in their re-enchanted world, they will wonder about us and what we did to their world, and what we thought we were doing. ~ James Howard Kunstler

We have created thousands and thousands of places in America that aren't worth caring about, and when we have enough of them, we're going to have a country that's not worth defending. ~ James Howard Kunstler

No amount or combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to continue running what we're running, the way we're running it. ~ James Howard Kunstler

As a long-time registered Democrat who started voting in the year of Watergate, I resent being taken for a ride to the place where anything goes and nothing matters. And especially where nothing matters less than clear thinking and straight talk. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Suburbia is not going to run on biodiesel. The easy-motoring tourist industry is not going to run on biodiesel, wind power and solar fuel. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The nation was cracking under the weight of bloated modernity and all the patches pasted onto its excessive and malfunctioning hypercomplexity, and people were bewildered by the strange glitches, failures and shortages. Going forward, nothing would really work anymore as it was designed to, yet the hope and expectation that it would all magically recover dominated the chatter in the rare moments when people could step back from their frantic lives and share a meal or a drink. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Everything we do these days - our lust for ever more comfort, pleasure, and distraction, our refusal to engage with the mandates of reality, our fidelity to cults of technology and limitless growth, our narcissistic national exceptionalism - all of this propels us toward the realm where souls abandon all hope. ~ James Howard Kunstler

I'm convinced that the Great Lakes region will be at the center of an internally-focused North American economy when the hallucination of oil-powered globalism dissolves. Places like Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit will have a new life, but not at the scale of the twentieth century. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Americans threw away their communities in order to save a few dollars on hair dryers and plastic food storage tubs, never stopping to reflect on what they were destroying. ~ James Howard Kunstler

America does not want change, except from the cash register at Wal-Mart. ~ James Howard Kunstler

History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the U.S.A. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory. ~ James Howard Kunstler

I don't like talking about 'solutions.' I prefer talking about intelligent responses. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The two elements of the suburban pattern that cause the greatest problems are the extreme separation of uses and the vast distances between things ~ James Howard Kunstler

Phoenix and Las Vegas have grim long-term prospects. On top of oil-and-gas problems, they will have terrible problems with water and the ability to produce food locally. I suppose it shows how delusional the public is, and how our institutional controls have decayed - for instance, lending standards. ~ James Howard Kunstler

There was nothing like it before in history: a machine that promised liberation from the daily bondage of place. And in a free country like the United States, with the unrestricted right to travel, a vast geographical territory to spread out into, and a national tradition of picking up and moving whenever life became intolerable, the automobile came as a blessing. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Our twenty-first century economy may focus on agriculture, not information. ~ James Howard Kunstler

I think that Obama's failure to reestablish the rule of law in money matters is the most damaging thing that he's done - and perhaps the most damaging thing that has happened in American politics in my lifetime. Because once the rule of law is absent in money matters, then anything really goes in politics. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The twentieth century was about getting around. The twenty-first century will be about staying in a place worth staying in. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The quality of life of European cities and towns of almost any size make life in America look not just like a joke, but a sick joke, a horror movie. But I'd rather stay involved and do what I can to make this a better place than move to the south of France and enjoy the good life. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Human settlements are like living organisms. They must grow, and they will change. But we can decide on the nature of that growth - on the quality and the character of it - and where it ought to go. We don't have to scatter the building blocks of our civic life all over the countryside, destroying our towns and ruining farmland. ~ James Howard Kunstler

It's like watching a James Bond movie. Morpheus - in a black trench-coat-style blazer that hangs to his thighs, gray tweed pants, a dark gray vest, skinny red tie, and black pin-striped dress shirt - could pass for a punk-fae secret agent who's captured his villain. His thick blue waves touch his shoulders from under a gray tweed flat cap, and his wings drape down his back and across the floor, fluttering sporadically as he keeps his balance against Jeb's resistance. ~ A.G. Howard

Your mind is like Heraclitus' river. Your mind, in fact, is like nineteenth-century father of psychology William James' "stream of consciousness," a bubbling, babbling brook. Your mind constantly produces different currents of associations, different swirls of thought, and different moods. ~ Howard Bloom

I wear a lot of black, and it's not because I'm depressed or anything. I like black jeans - they're pretty much the only colored jeans I wear. James Jeans have the most comfortable fabric. I'd say in general, I dress pretty comfortably. ~ Brittany Howard

Salvador [Dali] was brought up in Spain, a country colored by the legends of Hannibal, El Greco, and Cervantes. I was brought up in Ohio, a region steeped in the tradition of Coxey's Army, the Anti-Saloon League, and William Howard Taft. ~ James Thurber

I quite like American music, like The Fray - I'm a massive fan of them - and The Killers. I also like more acoustic stuff like Ed Sheeran; I like this English songwriter James Morrison and another singer called Ben Howard. ~ Louis Tomlinson

In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. It was not at all clear that the Rio Grande was the southern boundary of Texas, although Texas had forced the defeated Mexican general Santa Anna to say so when he was a prisoner. The traditional border between Texas and Mexico had been the Nueces River, about 150 miles to the north, and both Mexico and the United States had recognized that as the border. However, Polk, encouraging the Texans to accept annexation, had assured them he would uphold their claims to the Rio Grande. Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation. ~ Howard Zinn

LeBron James is the best player, hands down. He is easily moving into the territory of one of the best players of all time and may end up being the best player of all time. ~ Howard Bryant

The death of Willie James Howard was effectively shelved in 1945. Beyond the Justice Department, Moore and Marshall had nowhere to go. The process of the case, frustrating in the extreme from its deplorable beginning to its unjust end, was a repulsive reminder to Moore and Marshall of the ruthless measures men took to protect the flower that was "Southern white womanhood. ~ Gilbert King

I regret my choice of words which do not accurately reflect the process of the James committee, with which I have been closely involved and totally support. ~ Howard Flight

The term "godawful" should be used sparingly in connection with motion pictures. With Angels & Demons , however, it seems oddly appropriate. Not only does this prequel-turned-sequel to The Da Vinci Code make its predecessor seem like a masterwork of pacing and plotting, but it may represent a nadir for director Ron Howard and is probably the worst instance of acting from star Tom Hanks since back in the days when he was struggling out from under the shadow of Bosom Buddies . ~ James Berardinelli

It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual. ~ John Howard Griffin

We don't know why God chose to deliver Peter from death and James through death. The text doesn't say. ~ K. Howard Joslin

Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before. ~ James Newton Howard

Maiha
"Allow me to introduce you to the Children of Mars. On lead guitar and eight barreled Calliope Gatlin, Colonel Fujiyama. On bass and manning the double-barreled thirty millimeter PPC's we have Major Howard. Singing backup and key boards we have Fight Captain Benz with a lovely ten millimeter rapid fire gauss rifle. Her lovely partner Captain Martin on drums with her ten millimeter Hell-bore pulse laser rifle. And singing lead and front man, a true artist with a bang from the Castile sniper rifle, our Big Daddy, Papa of Death and Destruction, the one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend, Lord James Nakatoma- Bailey." When I finished Alice was giggling out loud. ~ Jessie Wolf

McVries seemed not to have heard.
"These things, they don't even bear the weight of conversation," he said, "J.D. Salinger ... John Knowles ... even James Kirkwood and that guy Don Bredes ... they've destroyed being an adolescent, Garraty. If you're a sixteen-year-boy, you can't discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon."
McVries laughed a little hysterically. ~ Stephen King

One [event] is the discovery of the anesthetic properties of chloroform [in 1847] by James Simpson of Scotland. Following the reports of [William] Morton's demonstration [1846], he tried ether but, dissatisfied, searched for a substitute and came upon chlorophorm. He was an obstetrician. His use of anesthesia to alleviate the pains of childbirth was violently opposed by the Scottish clergy on the ground that pain was ordained by the scriptural command, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children", and that it was impious to attempt to avert it by anesthetic agents. And it was Simpson who stilled this opposition by his own famous quotation from scripture; he pointed out that when Eve was born, God cast Adam into deep sleep before performing upon him the notable costalectomy. Anesthesia was thus permissible by scriptural precedent. ~ Howard Wilcox Haggard

Slavery was immensely profitable to some masters. James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make 257 dollars on every (black slave) in a year, and spend only 12 or 13 dollars on his keep. ~ Howard Zinn

James Horner, James Newton Howard, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, or Ramin Djawadi would all be a dream come true for a 'Throne of Glass' soundtrack. ~ Sarah J. Maas

A cup in her hand that was either strong tea or weak coffee. She nodded toward his desktop monitor. On it, three ~ James S.A. Corey

What I have written is but a fleeting intimation of the outside of what one man sees and may tell about the path he walks. No one shares the secret of a life; no one enters into the heart of the mystery. ~ Howard Thurman

A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity. ~ William James

Wery weeny wight, plead for Morandmor! Notre Dame de la Ville, mercy of thy balmheartzyheat! ~ James Joyce

The fact that your patient gets well does not prove that your diagnosis was correct. ~ Samuel James Meltzer

The initial trauma of a young child may go underground but it will return to haunt us. ~ James Garbarino

To say good-bye. I wasn't there to tell her how much I ~ James Patterson

The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills - and as immortal. ~ James Branch Cabell

It is obvious that the aspects of mystery which gather round the word "election" are not confined to it alone. An important class of words, such as "calling," "predestination" "foreknowledge," "purpose," "gift," bears this same character; asserting or connoting, in appropriate contexts, the element of the inscrutable and sovereign in the action of the Divine will upon man, and particularly upon man's will and affection toward God. And it will be felt by careful students of the Bible in its larger and more general teachings that one deep characteristic of the Book, which with all its boundless multiplicity is yet one, is to emphasize on the side of man everything that can humble, convict, reduce to worshipping silence (see for typical passages Job 40:3, 1; Ro 3:19), and on the side of God everything which can bring home to man the transcendence and sovereign claims of his almighty Maker. ~ James Orr

Sidney was annoyed. What business was it of anyone else? His relationship with Amanda was private. He hated the idea of anyone talking about them. Now he would have to explain something that he didn't want to explain because he liked it all being vague and inexplicable. ~ James Runcie

Latter-day Saints, having received the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, are entitled to personal inspiration in the small events of life as well as when they are confronted with the giant Goliaths of life. ~ James E. Faust

Planet Earth, creation, the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know and stable shorelines, is in imminent peril. ~ James Hansen

The lifeblood of my career has been independent film. ~ James Woods

What about you?" Scarlet asked. "You have to enjoy the fear, too. Just a little?"
"Not the fear," Han said. "I just like being a little smarter than the next guy."
"That's all it is?"
"That, and I really hate paying taxes. ~ James S.A. Corey

A Jewish Native American half-breed orphan playing bagpipes wasn't the sort of impression I ever wanted to make ~ James Anderson

Faith, as James speaks about it, is not a system of belief, but a way of life that consciously draws its sustenance from God and lives for God and is energized by God himself. The word "dead" here and in 2:26 is the Greek adjective nekros, "dead, without life. ~ Ralph F. Wilson

I can never tire of speaking of the bridges of Paris. By day and by night have I paused on them to gaze at their views; the word not being too comprehensive for the crowds and groupings of objects that are visible from their arches. ~ James Fenimore Cooper

Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.Don't put limitations on yourself.Others will do that for you. ~ James Cameron

Our first response to hearing a story is the desire to tell it ourselves-the greater the story the greater the desire. We will go to considerable time and inconvenience to arrange a situation for its retelling. It is as though the story is itself seeking the occasion for its recurrence, making use of us as its agents. We do not go out searching for stories for ourselves; it is rather the stories that have found us for themselves. ~ James P. Carse

Know this; there is no magic. It's but a name given to what we can't comprehend. Don't catalog what you don't understand. It limits your abilities ~ James L. Davis

Ethical knowledge is the emplotment of one's life in the theological narrative ~ James K.A. Smith

Money can't buy happiness. ~ Howard Hughes

You can speed up your life if you want to - that's easy. Winding down is what's hard. ~ Jennifer James

Firstly, the Azerbaijanian struggle for a measure of autonomy and self-government is genuine and is locally inspired. The facts of history and existing conditions show that Azerbaijan has always been struggling to overthrow the feudal conditions imposed upon it (and upon the rest of Iran) by corrupt Iranian Governments.
Secondly, the extent of Russian interference appeared to be negligible. In our travels we saw few Russian troops, and in Kurdistan we saw none at all. The leaders of the Azerbaijanian Government are not Russians but Azerbaijanians, and with few exceptions their sole aim seems to be the recovery and improvement and economic reform of Azerbaijan. There may be some Russian influence by indirect means, but I would suggest that it is less than our own influence in Iran which we exercise by direct control of ministers, political parties, state financiers, and by petty bribery.
As for Kurdish Independence. The Kurds ask for an independence of their own making, not an independence sponsored by the British Government. Like the Azerbaijanians the Kurds are seeking real autonomy, and more than that, self-determination. Our present scheme to take them over and use them as a balancing factor in the political affairs of the Middle East is a reflection upon the honest of our intentions, and a direct blow at the spirit of all good men. ~ James Aldridge

You can't kill your way to success in a counter insurgency effort. You have to protect the people, get the civil military balance right, train the locals, and practice effective strategic communications. ~ James G. Stavridis