Petrol Quotes

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. ~ C.S. Lewis

I thought about my [Punjabi] family. The only nakshatram we think about is the division of petrol pumps when we have to see the girl. ~ Chetan Bhagat

[O]ur segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don't want to die; of long darkened convoys in the middle of the night; of shocked silent men wandering back down the hill from battle; of chow lines and atabrine tablets and foxholes and burning tanks and Arabs holding up eggs and the rustle of high-flown shells; of jeeps and petrol dumps and smelly bedding rolls and C rations and cactus patches and blown bridges and dead mules and hospital tenets and shirt collars greasy-black from months of wearing; and of laughter too, and anger and wine and lovely flowers and constant cussing. All these it is composed of; and of graves and graves and graves. ~ Ernie Pyle

Touring can be tough; the crew and I travel everywhere by a big pink bus, and live in petrol stations. ~ Marina And The Diamonds

Getting comprehensively lost in a car with a full tank of petrol at someone else's expense, you can't beat it. ~ Iain Sinclair

My wife will automatically quote and compare the price of diesel at every petrol station we drive by, like she's got oil-based Tourette's. ~ Ian Watson

The day we run out of petrol is the day Iran will be free. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

In petrol stations on the motorways where people have left the place looking messy, I clear up each lavatory I happen to have occupied. When people drop paper on the ground, and everything like that, I pick it up, put it in the lavatory, and make that room look nice. ~ Joanna Lumley

You see, mzungus make these programmes because in their countries they know that everything will work correctly. And when they come to Uganda they still make their programmes but they forget that things don't work here like they do when they are at home. And then when something goes wrong, like there's no petrol, or the road has been flooded, or the battery doesn't work, they can't do all the things in their programme. Sometimes, even when they are at home, the programme doesn't work. At these times, when the programme goes bad, it makes them very unhappy. Very unhappy. ~ Luke F.D. Marsden

Do you think that's what love is? Not what they say on the front of those cheesy Valentine's cards you see in petrol stations - you complete me - but is it when someone has seen you at your worst but still looks at you like you're the best thing that's ever happened to them? I think it might be. ~ Tanya Byrne

It is not true what everyone always says that the only way to see America is to go across it by car. Apart from the fact that it is impossible given its enormous size, it is also deadly boring. A few outings on the motorway are enough to give an idea of what small-town and even village America is like on average, with the endless suburbs along the highways, a sight of desperate squalor, with all those low buildings, petrol stations or other shops which look like them, and the colours of the writing on the shop signs, and you realize 95 per cent of America is a country of ugliness, oppressiveness and sameness, in short of relentless monotony. ~ Italo Calvino

It is not known why motorists, who sing the joys of the open road, spend so much petrol every week-end grinding their way to Southend and Brighton and Margate, in the stench of each other's exhausts, one hand on the horn and one foot on the brake, their eyes starting from their orbits in the nerve-racking search for cops, corners, blind turnings, and cross-road suicides. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I've got a fierce passion for politics but I can't stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country. I'm up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets. ~ Pete Doherty

Saving petrol is saving India's money. This is a sense of patriotism. The country can be energy-independent by energy conservation. I appeal to the other ministers also to do this. ~ Veerappa Moily

Norman Morrison soaked himself in petrol and burned himself on the steps of the Pentagon in protest against the Vietnam war...Would it perhaps have taken greater courage to set fire to the President? A body of men who sleep soundly on a daily programme of sanctioned mass-murder are surely only distrubed by personal danger. ~ Jeff Nuttall

I drove to Oxford with my van full of petrol and tin cans, as I didn't know there were service stations on the motorway. I pulled up on the hard shoulder and got my cans out. Then I filled up and set off again. That's how naive I was - so much not a cosmopolitan girl. ~ Jeanette Winterson

It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. ~ David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech

My dad was also a teacher until he was 34. I think there is a basis in reality. But I'd only done two jobs before I was an actor. I worked in a petrol station and I worked in a supermarket. ~ Domhnall Gleeson

Bluebell: Please, sir, I'm only a little [car] and I've left all my petrol on the grass. So if you don't mind eating the grass, sir, while I give this lady a ride-
Hazel: Bluebell, shut up! ~ Richard Adams

Harold pictured the gentleman on a station platform, smart in his suit, looking no different from anyone else. It must be the same all over England. People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The inhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that. Moved and humbled, he passed his paper napkin. ~ Rachel Joyce

The cost of motoring is a massive issue at the moment, there's no question. The price of petrol goes up every time you go to the petrol station. ~ Lucy Powell

Politicians are always saying that they are in support of Iraqi citizens and now they are increasing the price of petrol. We were oppressed for 35 years. We are like a sick patient who is in need of care, and they are increasing prices ~ Muhammad Ali

Water and petrol both come from the earth, and though they seem to be alike and even the same, they are in nature and purpose exact opposites, for the one extinguishes fire and the other adds fuel to it. So also the world and its treasures, the heart and its thirst for God are alike His creation. Now the result of the attempt to satisfy the heart with the wealth and pride and honours of this world is the same as if one tried to put out a fire with petrol, for the heart can only find ease and satisfaction in Him who created both it and the longing desire of which it is conscious. ~ Sadhu Sundar Singh

So unlike having to convert, you know, all the cars' or all the lorries' petrol stations, once you've actually got the clean fuels, it's relatively easy to, you know, get it to the airplanes. ~ Richard Branson

Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs. ~ Ian Paisley

People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that. ~ Rachel Joyce

Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed principles ~ G.K. Chesterton

No one in a novel by Virginia Woolf ever filled up the petrol tank of her car. No one in Hemingway's postwar novels ever worried about the effects of prolonged exposure to the threat of nuclear war. ~ J.G. Ballard

Throughout the autumn and the winter activity increased in the Beaulieu area, and with it came mysteries. Lepe House, the mansion at the entrance to the river, was taken over by the Navy and became full of secretive Naval officers; it became known that this was part of a mysterious Navel entity called 'Force J'. Near Lepe House and at the very mouth of the river a construction gang began work in full strength to make a hard, sloping concrete platform running down into the river where the flat-bottomed landing craft could beach to refuel and let their ramps down to embark the vehicles and tanks. This place was about two miles from 'Mastodon'. A mile or so along the coast a country house was occupied by a secret Naval party who did strange things with tugs and wires and winches, and with what looked like a gigantic reel of cotton floating in the sea; this was 'Pluto', Pipe Line Under The Ocean, which was to lay pipes from England to France to carry petrol to supply the armies which were due to land in Normandy. On a bare beach nearby a thousand navvies were camped making huge concrete structures known as 'Phoenix', one of many such sites all along the coast. It was not till after the invasion that it became known that these were a part of the artificial harbour 'Mulberry' on the north coast of France. ~ Nevil Shute

The descendants of those who crucified Christ ... have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, water, the good lands, petrol, well, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a small number of hands. ~ Hugo Chavez

Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life. ~ John Betjeman

A tent, a roll mat, a little bit of food, a bit of petrol in your tank and a vague idea of where you're going and that's all you need. ~ Ewan McGregor

There may be rhetoric about the socially constructed nature of Western science, but wherever it matters, there is no alternative. There are no specifically Hindu or Taoist designs for mobile phones, faxes or televisions. There are no satellites based on feminist alternatives to quantum theory. Even that great public sceptic about the value of science, Prince Charles, never flies a helicopter burning homeopathically diluted petrol, that is, water with only a memory of benzine molecules, maintained by a schedule derived from reading tea leaves, and navigated by a crystal ball. ~ Simon Blackburn

One day a man's son was run over by a car and he was killed and all mangled up. The father couldn't go on living, he felt ill, he cried all day, he went to a wizard and gave him all his money to bring his son back to life. The wizard said: "Go home and wait. Your son will return tonight." The father waited, but the son did not come home, so in the end he went to bed. He was just falling asleep when he heard footsteps in the kitchen. He got up feeling very happy and saw his son, he was all mangle up and had one arm missing and his head was split open, with the brains running out and he said he hated him because he'd left him in the middle of the road to go with women and it was his fault he was dead.' 'So?' 'So the father got some petrol and set fire to him.' 'I don't blame him.' I threw and finally hit the target. 'Point!' 'Four-two. ~ Niccolo Ammaniti

It's an illusion I've noticed before
words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again. ~ Elizabeth Wein

When I was a child I wanted to be a petrol pump attendant. I suppose you have all sorts of thoughts as a child and at the time I figured that it was a way to avoid doing anything like going on stage. ~ Saffron Burrows

I can't go to the cinema. I go to the bathroom in a petrol station and people come in there for autographs. It's tough, but I knew that was going to be the case. ~ Lewis Hamilton

Our great adventure ran out of petrol and stopped on this farm. ~ Steven Herrick

D'you know, I put so much petrol in me car the other day, I couldn't get in! ~ Vic Reeves

The sharp scents made my throat ache. I had been up such hillsides before, and smelled these same spring scents. But then the pine and grass scent had been diluted with the smell of petrol fumes from the road below and the voices of day trippers replaced those of the jays. Last time I walked such a path, the ground was littered with sandwich wrappers and cigarette butts instead of mallow blossoms and violets. Sandwich wrappers seemed a reasonable enough price to pay, I supposed, for such blessings of civilization as antibiotics and telephones, but just for the moment, I was willing to settle for the violets. I badly needed a little peace, and I felt it here. ~ Diana Gabaldon

It'll be nice to know that every gallon of petrol a Manchester United fan buys is going into our kitty. ~ Noel Gallagher

I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight, in the dusk, with the petrol running out, in search of a safe landing. ~ Winston Churchill

[And there was the matter of Dick Turpin. It looked like the same car, except that forever afterwards it seemed able to do 250 miles on a gallon of petrol, ran so quietly that you practically had to put your mouth over the exhaust pipe to see if the engine was firing , and issued its voice-synthesized warnings in a series of exquisite and perfectly-phrased haikus, each one original and apt ...
Late frost burns the bloom
Would a fool not let the belt
Restrain the body?
... it would say. And,
The cherry blossom
Tumbles from the highest tree
One needs more petrol] ~ Terry Pratchett

For kilometres on end the road was totally jammed with vehicles drawn up three or four abreast - petrol tankers, ammunition trucks, teams of horses,ambulances. It was impossible to move forwards or back. Russian combat aircraft now arrived in wave after wave, and threw bombs into that unprotected, inextricable mass. This is what hell must be like. ~ Christopher Duffy

Someone threw a petrol bomb at Alex Higgins once and he drank it! ~ Frank Carson

I switch off lights like a maniac. I drive at reasonable speeds so that I don't waste petrol. ~ Joanna Lumley

At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner frequented by lorry drivers who have either just unloaded or or are waiting to pick up their cargo. Anyone nursing a disappointment with domestic life would find relief in this tiled, brightly lit cafeteria with its smells of fries and petrol, for it has the reassuring feel of a place where everyone is just passing through
and which therefore has none of the close-knit or convivial atmosphere which could cast a humiliating light on one's own alienation. It suggests itself as an ideal location for Christmas lunch for those let down by their families. ~ Alain De Botton

Was Cook's ship a scientific expedition protected by a military force or a military expedition with a few scientists tagging along? That's like asking whether your petrol tank is half empty or half full. It was both. The Scientific Revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable. People such as Captain James Cook and the botanist Joseph Banks could hardly distinguish science from empire. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

In two days I'll fly to Georgia to sign estate paperwork and retrieve Father's remains, which are going straight down a toilet at the dodgiest petrol station I can find. ~ Wendy Higgins

I always feel like rejection is my petrol. That's what keeps me going. ~ Laura Kightlinger

Nothing demonstrates so clearly as the unfolding of our conflict with Russia how essential it is that the Head of a State must be capable of swift, decisive action on his own responsibility, when a war seems to him to be inevitable. In a letter which we found on Stalin's son written by a friend, stands the following phrase : "I hope to be able to see my Anuschka once more before the promenade to Berlin."
If, in accordance with their plan, the Russians had been able to foresee our actions, it is, probable that nothing would have been able to stop their armoured units, for the highly developed road system of central Europe would greatly have favoured their advance. In any case, I take credit for the fact that we succeeded in making the Russians hold off right up to the moment when we launched our attack, and that we did so by entering into agreements which were favourable to their interests. Suppose for example that, when the Russians marched into Rumania, we had not been able to limit their conquests to Bessarabia, they would in one swoop have grabbed all the oilfields of the country, and we should have found ourselves, from the spring of that very year, completely frustrated as regards our supplies of petrol. ~ Adolf Hitler

It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine. ~ Richard Dawkins

When you express thankfulness, even the almost empty tank of petrol will go the extra mile; it changes challenges into opportunities, mistakes into experiences, disappointments into celebrations, doubt into faith. ~ Malti Bhojwani

I used to have nightmare about having petrol poured over me, and being set on fire, and nowadays I have nightmares that I have wooden teeth and that they are continually falling out, as if I had an infinite number of them. It seems that everyone has their own inexplicable fear to have nightmares about. We need nightmares to keep ourselves entertained, and fend off the contentment that we all fear and abhor so much. ~ Louis De Bernieres

In a war you have to take up arms and people will get killed, and I can support that kind of action by petrol bombing and bombs under cars, and probably at a later stage, the shooting of vivisectors on their doorsteps. It's a war, and there's no other way you can stop vivisectors. ~ Tim Daly

When the bomb doors are open and you're flying straight and steady over battery upon battery of radar guided guns with ten thousand pounds of explosives and two thousand gallons of high octane petrol exposed under your seat it feels like you're dangling a piece of raw red meat to a great white shark. That's how he once described the bomb run in a letter to his father. ~ Glenn Haybittle

How on earth can cow's milk be considered an essential part of our diet when its purpose is to feed calves until they are old enough to be weaned? How does it make any sense at all that people are supposed to have it? Just because we have been doing it for centuries does not mean it is rational or good for us; it just means it was an available food source at some point, and has since become an acceptable part of the human diet.

"But essential? Not on your life. Good for you? No way. Talk about putting diesel fuel in a car that requires petrol. At least both diesel and petrol operate similar types of vehicles. ~ Liberty Forrest

No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right. ~ Bertrand Russell

The sound of diesel fuel rushing through grimy pistons and cylinders below a morning-fogged window bored through his ears like a deep-water drill bit, and the thump of his own heartbeat cursed him for breaking one of his many rules. ~ Luke Taylor

Paris had its sweetest smell, the smell of chestnut trees in bloom and of petrol with a few grains of dust that crack under your teeth like pepper. In the darknes the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence. Everyone looked at their house and thought, Tomorrow it will be in ruins, tomorrow I'l have nothing left. ~ Irene Nemirovsky

I remember a picture on the front page of the 'Sun' during the Brixton riots: a rasta guy with a petrol bomb, and a headline saying something like: 'The Future of Britain.' And I thought: 'Wow! Look at the power of that image,' and I wanted to get behind the camera to make these people three-dimensional. ~ Gurinder Chadha

For you cannot live in New York City very long and not be conscious of the niceties of being rich - the city is, after all, an ecstatic exercise in merchandising - and one evening of his visit to Venezuela Sutherland sat straight up when he read a line of Santayana's: Money is the petrol of life. ~ Andrew Holleran

Gerard Houllier's thoughts on the matter international football echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for ten days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you're expected to be nice about it. ~ Arsene Wenger

Put your glasses on mate ….. Come down from there, you're gonna kill yourself …. Well, what does your Method Statement say? …. Right, let's get you re-inducted. You need a reminder of site rules ….. Where are your outriggers, mate? ….. Put your glasses on ….. Put your glasses on …. Put your glasses on …. Oh, they steam up, do they? I've never heard that one before …. Where's your mask? If you breathe this shit in you're going to kill yourself. Silicosis is incurable ….. Right STOP! Do not reverse another inch without a banksman ….. Don't put your glasses on just because you see me walk around the corner. They won't protect MY eyes …. Hook yourself on, what's the matter with you? Are all you scaffolders superhuman or something? ….. Put your glasses on ….. Oi! What stops me walking right in there? Where's your barriers and signage? ….. Oi! I'm getting showered in fucking sparks here. And so is that can of petrol ….. Put your glasses on …. Where's the flashback arrestor on this bottle of propane? ….. Hey, pal, stop welding until you've sheeted up ….. What are you doing climbing up there? Where's your supervisor? What did he say about access in this morning's Safe Start briefing? Nothing? Right, he can sit through another induction tomorrow ….. Where are the retaining pins to the joint clamps in this concrete pump line? SEAMUS! Fucking deal with this, will you? ….Put your glasses on …. Hey! Hey! Come here! Why have you got a nail instead of an 'R' clip to the quick-hitch system o ~ Karl Wiggins

There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble - we'd move a foot - hope would rise - then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we'd be stuck again. Eveyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so fat and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Matches were continually being struck - the drivers of autorickshaws lit cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution. ~ Aravind Adiga

The relentless invisible storm of radio signals and electronic particles, the hustle and bustle, and the billions of petrol explosions in the engine blocks of trucks and cars seem to churn up the molecules of life and heaven so violently that the beautiful fogs are unable to hold together like they once did. ~ Michael Leunig

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world - the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism. ~ Tariq Ali