Public transport

"The failure to invest in our public transportation and public life, I think, is a scandal and a shame and it should be a national embarrassment."

"Everybody's got an intuition that public transit uses less energy and produces less pollution than private vehicles, I don't know of any previous study that has actually quantified it. The environmental advantages are really very striking because they're so great."

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation."

"You can't understand a city without using its public transportation system."

"A city cannot be modernized without a metro system!"

"Public transport is for jerks and lesbians."

"It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right."

"I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home."

"I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world."

"Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman's case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday."