Big Oil Quotes & Sayings

I wear Aveda Energizing oil. I am big into aromatherapy. — Sharon Stone

The things that happen are an earthquake, another bomb in Iraq, some big jolt on Wall Street in oil prices, and then you have some new study on drought patterns from climate change. Or another little incremental improvement in photovoltaics. Where do those fit in to the daily stream? They don't. — Andrew Revkin

The funny thing about almost-dying is that afterward everyone expects you to jump on the happy train and take time to chase butterflies through grassy fields or see rainbows in puddles of oil on the highway. It's a miracle, they'll say with an expectant look, as if you've been given a big old gift and you better not disappoint Grandma by pulling a face when you unwrap the box and find a lumpy, misshapen sweater.
That's what life is, pretty much: full of holes and tangles and ways to get stuck. Uncomfortable and itchy. A present you never asked for, never wanted, never chose. A present you're supposed to be excited to wear, day after day, even when you'd rather stay in bed and do nothing.
The truth is this: it doesn't take any skill to almost-die, or to almost-live, either. — Lauren Oliver

Another thing they talk about a lot is water - and that's a very crucial thing, which is not discussed very much in the United States but it's probably the main reason why Israel is never going to give up the West Bank. See, this is a very arid region, so water is more important than oil, and there are very limited water resources in Israel. In fact, a lot of the wars in the Middle East have been about water - for instance, the wars involving Israel and Syria have usually been about the headwaters of the Jordan, which come from Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. And as a matter of fact, one of the main reasons why Israel is holding on to the so-called "Security Zone" it seized in southern Lebanon [in the 1982 invasion] is that that area includes a mountain, Mount Hermon, which is a big part of the watershed that brings water to the region. — Noam Chomsky

So when you go up against the Far Right you go up against the big financial special interests like the Halliburtons of the world, the big oil companies, the big energy companies who work so hard to rip us off. — Barbara Boxer

Most companies aim to get bigger. But beyond a certain point, bigness becomes synonymous with badness. Think of Big Pharma, Big Auto, Big Oil. Worse, if you are regularly described as one of the Big Four, Five, or Six in any business sector, you are probably already in the sights of regulators and lawmakers. — Andrew Hill

It was the power of Business, not the deliberations of statesman, that shaped the destinies of nations. The Foreign Ministers of the great powers might make the actual declarations of their Governments' policies; but it was the Big Business men, the bankers and their dependents, the arms manufacturers, the oil companies, the big industrialists, who determined what those policies should be. — Eric Ambler

Sweeping the dorm soon's it's empty, I'm after dust mice under his bed when I get a smell of something that makes me realize for the first time since I been in the hospital that the big dorm full of beds, sleeps forty grown men, has always been sticky with a thousand other smells - smells of germicide, zinc ointment, and foot powder, smell of piss and sour old-man manure, of Pablum and eyewash, of musty shorts and socks musty even when they're fresh back from the laundry, the stiff odor of starch in the linen, the acid stench of morning mouths, the banana smell of machine oil, and sometimes the smell of singed hair - but never before now, before he came in, the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work. — Ken Kesey

When the Industrial Revolution started, the amount of carbon sitting underneath Britain in the form of coal was as big as the amount of carbon sitting under Saudi Arabia in the form of oil, and this carbon powered the Industrial Revolution, it put the 'Great' in Great Britain, and led to Britain's temporary world domination. — David J. C. MacKay

But Big Oil and Big Coal have always been as skilled at propaganda as they are at mining and drilling. Like the tobacco industry before them, their success depends on keeping Americans stupid. — Jeff Goodell

I'm not a person whom the sight of olive oil repels, and I love Greek cooking. We had onion soup with grated cheese on top; then the souvlaka, which comes spiced with lemon and herbs, and flanked with chips and green beans in oil and a big dish of tomato salad. Then cheese, and halvas, which is a sort of loaf made of grated nuts and honey, and is delicious. And finally the wonderful grapes of Greece. — Mary Stewart

Although the guilty verdict surprised few, the size of the resulting fine stunned the company and the country. For each of the 1,462 carloads of oil that had enjoyed an illegal rebate, Landis levied the highest possible fine, $20,000, generating a spectacular cumulative total of $29,240,000. Commenting on the hefty charge, Mark Twain drolly remarked that the sum evoked the bride's proverbial astonishment on the morning after her wedding: I expected it but didn't suppose it would be so big. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think in the end, you know, we're just addicted to oil. We've got to overcome that addiction, and we need some serious accountability of big oil, because big oil, like so much of big businesses, has just colonized our government, colonized the regulatory agencies so we can't impose any kind of accountability on them. — Cornel West

The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline increases to an alarming point. That will set bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production. — Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari

You know, if we're going to bring down the price of gas, you have to have three things. You have to have a big reserve, you have to have the ability to develop oil out of that reserve quickly, and you have to be able to produce oil at a relatively low cost. — Chris Cannon

I have no problem with a war for oil-if we accompany it with a real program for energy conservation. But when we tell the world we couldn't care less about climate change, that we feel entitled to drive whatever big cars we feel like, that we feel entitled to consume however much oil we like, the message we send is that a war for oil in the gulf is not a war to protect the world's right to economic survival-but our right to indulge. Now that will be seen as immoral. — Thomas Friedman

The Arctic and the Antarctic are melting quickly. We may have waited too long to get started. But this is a day for optimism because the battle is fully joined, and the idea that big oil is unbeatable is no longer true. — Bill McKibben

Find some fun way to get a little more oil on your hands or mud on your boots. Sometimes, that's what it takes to take down some of the really big problems. — Astro Teller

The oil areas have a big problem digesting the oil. There's too much money, and the people don't know what to do with it. I'm finding all the time that we have more industries and more success stories which are not involved with oil. — Stef Wertheimer

We must reign in overspending by ridding government of outmoded programs, making Big Oil pay their fair share, repealing massive tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas, and enacting a tax code that no longer favors millionaires and billionaires. — Paul Tonko

My plat de resistance is potato salad with garlic and olive oil which we press from the olives from my trees in the grounds of my home near St Remy de Provence. I have four hectares and take the olives down to the local community press at Maussane les Alpilles. I don't produce big quantities; it is just for the family and friends. — Jean Reno

It's an earnings-driven market. The big question is whether the flow of earnings can rescue the market from the twin dreadnoughts of higher oil and interest rates. — Larry Wachtel

My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women. — Charles M. Blow

The carbon fuels industry-big oil and coal-have a 50-year lease on the Republican Party and they are drilling it for everything it's worth. — Al Gore

They said no man was an island, and Anita figured that was probably true. But women were; they had to be. And even if someone bothered to sail over and disembark, he'd soon discover that there was always a castle at the center of the island, surrounded by a deep moat, with a rickety drawbridge and archers manning the battlements and a big pot of oil posed above the gate, ready to boil alive anyone who dared to cross the threshold. — Tommy Wallach

If there is the right opportunity for us to have a big oil play in Congo or somewhere else, we will definitely go for it. — Dan Gertler

Indeed one streak in our economy, we're missing the big oil companies. We're missing other big energy companies. We're missing the big picture, and I have a record of trying to go at the problems that actually exist, and I will continue to do that. — Hillary Clinton

All told, these profit levels have put the world's five largest publicly traded oil companies on track to earn more than $100 billion before year's end. Yet, at the same time that Big Oil's bottom line is going up, so are Americans' energy costs. — Allyson Schwartz

People are saying, 'Big Data is the new oil.' — Gary Wolf

She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil. — Philipp Meyer

What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston's "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background." This appropriated line, stenciled on canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter stencils, smudging oil sticks, and graphite to transform the words into abstractions, seemed to be ad copy for some aspect of life for all black bodies. — Claudia Rankine

The oil patch pays good. They're decent jobs paying between 50 and 70 thousand a year. Fracking has a big impact on the oil consumption in the United States. — Harold Hamm

The difference between a healthy environment and an unhealthy environment can be summed up in one word, and it's not 'CO2' or 'climate' or 'temperature.' It's 'development.' [ ... ] Whether you're drinking clean drinking water, listening to a thunderstorm with pleasure instead of fear, or going to the Grand Canyon, you should be thanking Big Coal, Big Oil, and Big Gas. — Alex Epstein

I, the driver of this car, that used to be Jim Ross, the teamster, and J.A. Ross and Co., general merchandise at Queen Centre, California, am now J. Arnold Ross, oil operator, and my breakfast is about digested, and I am a little too warm in my big new overcoat because the sun is coming out, and I have a new well flowing four thousand barrels at Los Lobos river, and sixteen on the pump at Antelope, and I'm on my way to sign a lease at Beach City, and we'll make up our schedule in the next couple of hours, and 'Bunny' is sitting beside me, and he is well and strong, and is going to own everything I am making, and follow in my footsteps, except that he will never make the ugly blunders or have painful memories that I have, but will be wise and perfect and do everything I say. — Upton Sinclair

In addition, the oil royalties the Federal Government does not collect from big oil will starve the Land and Water Conservation Fund of critical financial resources. — Ron Kind

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state. — Gore Vidal

If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast. — Barbara Kingsolver

If you think Wall Street firms have it good, you haven't looked closely at Big Oil. — Jeff Goodell

Some hedge fund managers have made big bucks trading oil futures - George Soros is one. — Gary Weiss

Unlike George Bush and his friends at the big oil companies, I'm going to work for a real energy policy for this country that decreases America's dependence on foreign oil and helps lower the costs to American families. — John F. Kerry

There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and all the four legs extended, wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat died in the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat, of the men at the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream. — Ernest Hemingway,

You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. — Raymond Chandler

I'm not a big chicken or meat eater, but sometimes I'll eat it if it's locally raised. The family dinner will be stir-fry, or we'll roll our own sushi with brown rice, spinach, salmon, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and seaweed. The kids love it! — Alysia Reiner

Believe it or not, I'm a big fan of patchouli oil. I know it's not a universally liked fragrance. I usually combine it with other essential oils - I have many mixtures I like. — Olivia Wilde

There was no such thing as just doing what was right anymore. It was a tightrope walk few understood. "National interests" were really corporate interests. Immigration was really about cheap labor for multinational corporations. America's Middle East policy was about cheap oil so that Big Oil could expand their reach and influence without the weak US economy imploding. — William Struse

There's a lot to be said about what's happening to our ocean, big companies polluting it with their oil and all the raw garbage that's being spilled in there. — Lloyd Bridges

Here are problems with the Turkish products inside Russia and the tourism going down. People are worried about that. But the really big economic weapons, oil and especially natural gas, those have not been brought into play yet - mostly in the form of threat so far. So basically the view from here is that, yeah, things are getting bad, but they could still get much, much worse. — Peter Kenyon

We've seen filibusters to block judicial nominations, jobs bills, political transparency, ending Big Oil subsidies - you name it, there's been a filibuster. — Elizabeth Warren

We all say data is the next white oil. [Owning the oil field is not as important as owning the refinery because what will make the big money is in refining the oil. Same goes with data, and making sure you extract the real value out of the data.] — Maurice Levy

Stop being so greedy, and so selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People are starving and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion pages for the latest styles. Nations like ours are drowing in poverty, but your people don't even hear our cries for help. You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell you these things. You label them radicals or Communists. You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden, instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude. There's not much time left. If you don't change, you're doomed. — John Perkins

Instead of following through on their promise to concentrate on jobs, Republicans have attacked seniors, working families, women, and the most vulnerable among us. They have pursued an extreme agenda that would end Medicare as we know it and cut Social Security benefits in order to continue giving tax breaks to Big Oil and millionaires. — Dina Titus

I can't help but be attracted to pregnant women. Unless they're malnourished. I'll see a malnourished pregnant woman on the subway sometimes, big in the belly but with stick-figure arms and hair like a rat's, and I want to buy her a space heater. I want to yell at her parents. I remember going up to this real malnourished-looking pregnant lady on the G train one time and asking her if she'd like a free dinner at Junior's. She couldn't believe I was trying to pick her up on the G train, a pregnant woman with a ring on her finger. I hadn't noticed the ring. It was one hell of a big ring. I tried to convince her that I wasn't trying to pick her up. I offered to give her fifty bucks for cooking oil. That just made matters worse. Turns out she was a famous model. I've seen her on billboards. — Joshua Ferris

For one, a modified vegetable oil that makes asphalt less likely to crack in the winter or turn to tar in the summer. Cargill started selling it two years ago and has already shipped 30 million pounds of the product around the world. The plan is to be selling 100 million pounds of it a year by 2020. Another big win could be soybean oil that can be tweaked into foam for car seats. — Anonymous

Vic just laughed at that, didn't bother to tell him she had pulled his cell phone apart and shoved it in the garbage the day before. He took her in his arms, held her in his bearish embrace. He was a big man, glum about being overweight, but he smelled better than any guy she had ever met. His chest smelled of cedar and motor oil and the outdoors. He smelled like responsibility. For a moment, being held by him, she remembered what it had been like to be happy. — Joe Hill

It's fine if you're making 1,000 or 2,000 of an electric car, and I think there is value in that in a lot of ways, but it's not going to have a big dent in oil consumption in the country, or CO2 emissions. — Rick Wagoner

The most overrated ingredients are garlic and extra-virgin olive oil. With garlic, it's personal; I have never been that big of a fan of its flavor. As for extra-virgin olive oil, I do use it quite often but its ubiquity serves to overshadow many wonderful oils like pistachio, walnut, argan and even grapeseed. — Lela Rose

According to old frineds who grew up with Stanley Ann Dunham, she became a serious student of Communist and Marxist theories back in high school. One profile even named a few of her radical teachers and administrators at Mercer High, which Dunham attended, whose classrooms formed part of what was called "anarchy alley." What sounds strange is that this avante-garde, supposedly idealistic communist-thinking student of the left met a major oil company executive during the radical 1960s, and not only found him not to be a repulsively evil money-grubbing capitalist pig, but was so taken in by his Big Oil company/military charm that she married him.
Okay, so maybe that's not coincidence. Maybe that's just the power of love. — Mondo Frazier

The technical developments of almost every form of wealth [e.g., oil, minerals] are the forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly, is the immediate cause of War. — Aleister Crowley

But they are not going to take on Big Oil because Big Oil is very generous at campaign time, and this is all about the elections. They want to pretend that they are doing something meaningful. — Peter DeFazio

In the most extreme cases, I would pull a big pair of glasses out of my pocket and carefully slide them up my nose, almost past the bridge. Then I wasn't pretending anymore: everything was a blur, the other person's pimples disappeared. Behind my thick lenses, I could say anything, without worrying about possible consequences. I felt my body flow into this gelatinous mist effortlessly, gracefully as a drop of oil falling into a glass of water. Blindness set me free. No longer a slave to outward forms, I finally became myself. — Marie Nimier

Rather than proposing a forward-looking energy initiative, House Republicans continue to push Big Oil's tired old ideas, ideas that will do absolutely nothing to lower gas prices for the American consumer. — Jan Schakowsky

The people see that Wall Street is running our economic policy, that big oil is running our energy policy and the military industrial complex is determining our foreign policy ... — Alan Grayson

We deeply regret that some Senators are still willing to do Big Oil?s bidding, and we now turn to the House where the Arctic drilling scheme should be dead on arrival. Americans are clamoring for a clean Congress and a clean energy plan, but sadly they were shortchanged on both today. — Carl Pope

There's one post-Christmas chore I love-writing thank-you letters ... Lots of companies for many reasonable reasons, I guess, have a policy against sending even Christmas cards, never mind things, at Christmastime. But our clan gets a big kick out of opening the Warner-Lambert box containing an assortment of their wares; we argue over which of the boys is to get the Union Oil Co. necktie [and] all the holiday long we play the marvelous Christmas music sent by Goodyear ... None of these things means that Forbes or Forbeses have been had. But all of us like being thought of. — Malcolm Forbes

Speaking of prostitutes, big oil's top call girl Sen Inhofe wants to kill fuel economy backed by automakers, small biz, enviros, & consumers — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil, — Ahmed Chalabi

Get a job and when you earn a little bit of money, then you can do more good. Then bringing your values doesn't mean you have to compromise yourself. You got to get over this idea that you can't work for a big corporation, or for big oil or bigger pharma, because actually, those are some of the great jobs are and you can do good there. — Dana Perino

I have been using the Lipo Target Massager (not every day) and the Detox Oil. Recently my husband noticed that the cellulite on my thighs had decreased. For a man to notice anything there has to be quite a big difference - so it works really well. — Charmaine

A few moments later the back door of one of the bungalows opened, and a figure in a broad-striped bathing suit flung down the paddock, cleared the stile, rushed through the tussock grass into the hollow, staggered up the sandy hillock, and raced for dear life over the big porous stones, over the cold, wet pebbles, on to the hard sand that gleamed like oil. Splish-Splosh! Splish-Splosh! The water bubbled round his legs as Stanley Burnell waded out exulting. First man in as usual! He'd beaten them all again. And he swooped down to souse his head and neck. "Hail, — Katherine Mansfield

Mitt Romney has won the 2012 presidential nomination by promising Republicans that he would end a so-called 'culture of dependency' on welfare - welfare defined as 'free stuff' and food stamps for poor folks, not tax breaks for Big Oil or tax shelters for Bain executives. — Christine Pelosi

I want millionaires and billionaires and Big Oil companies to pay their fair share. — Elizabeth Warren

It happened as it always did, swallowing her swiftly and completely. Intense. Painful. Quick, vivid colors spun beneath her eyelids. Sounds were sharp inside her skull. Fire shot up through her bones. She may have been screaming and she wouldn't have known. There was smoke in her nose, thick and black, and she couldn't breathe. It stung her eyes and licked at her skin. Wood and metal crashed down as skin blistered and popped and she knew this wasn't her, knew it was someone else, someone with a bigger body, bigger boots and darker jeans, and big ol' hands with scars on the fingers. Men's hands. Nails blunt and dirty with oil and grease and burning and- The cars were on fire. Paper burned and curled and rags ignited, the cement floor pockmarked by flash fires. Meat withered in her nose and she realized it was her. Him. Dancing embers blackened and burned bone. He screamed and she hoped she was not. He writhed and she really hoped she was not. He was dying, dead, and- — Angele Gougeon

Lennie Smullenski and Anthony Zuck bake the goodies in the back room in big steel ovens and troughs of hot oil. Clouds of flour and sugar sift onto table surfaces and slip under foot. And lard is transferred daily from commercial sized vats directly to local butts. — Janet Evanovich

Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly. You used to choose the things you wanted: there were tiny potatoes in their skins, remember, and artichokes boiled in olive oil, as big as your thumb, and much tenderer ... and then the waiter would throw them all into an ugly white bowl and splash a little oil and vinegar over them, and you would have a salad as fresh and tonic to your several senses as La Primavera. It can still be done, although never in the same typhoidic and enraptured air. You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Towles burn. Bathroom inferno! Chanel No. 5, it burns. Oil paintings of racehorses and dead pheasants burn. The reproduction Oriental carpets burn. Evie's bad dried flower arrangements, they're these little tabletop infernos. Too cute! Evie's Katty Kathy doll, it melts, then it burns. Evie's collection of big carnival stuffed animals - Cootie, Poochie, Pam-Pam, Mr. Bunnits, Choochie, Poo Poo and Ringer - it's fun-fur holocaust. Too sweet. Too precious. — Chuck Palahniuk

Big Oil is a club, and they'll do everything to keep me out. — T. Boone Pickens

The summers before that are a blur of baby oil and Sun-In and hating our bodies (I got big breasts; Tibby got no breasts) at the Rockwood public swimming pool. — Ann Brashares

I turned over, and those big hands got to work on my back. I stifled a whimper in the pillow, because Marco's idea of a massage bore no resemblance whatsoever to the relaxing spa variety. There was no lavender oil, no soothing music, no hot towels. Just an all-out assault on cramped muscles, until they cowered in surrender and turned to Jell-O. — Karen Chance

Cars are the most central thing in America, in a lot of ways. They've probably influenced the way we live more than anything else, and yet every really big problem - whether it's the environment or who dictates the international economy because of oil - is all tied to cars. Ultimately, cars are bad for civilization. I don't know if they'll end us. — Chuck Klosterman

It's big business baby and its smile is hideous.
Top down violence, structural viciousness.
Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives.
But don't worry bout that. Worry bout terrorists.

The water levels rising! The water levels rising!
The animals, the polarbears, the elephants are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying.
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport.

Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes
Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them.
Live porn streamed to your pre-teens bedrooms.
Glass ceiling, no headroom. Half a generation live beneath the breadline. — Kate Tempest

Five years of Republicans' failed energy policies have resulted in Americans paying twice as much at the pump as they did in 2001, while big oil companies make triple the profits. — Russ Carnahan

I'm fighting for small businesses. I'm not fighting for big oil. Don't be confused. And there are thousands of businesses in this state that are at great risk. Meanwhile, the country keeps guzzling the oil, but we're out of work down here. We need to get back to work to build this region, and we intend to do so. — Mary Landrieu

Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to the meter reader he's telling him the world's sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips. — Grace Paley

The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil. — James Lovelock

We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas guzzling automobiles. Big cars made sense only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat makes sense only because the true costs of producing it are not counted. — Frances Moore Lappe

How about that oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. And you know, the oil slick is going everywhere. So the next time somebody lands on the Hudson, it won't be that big a deal. — David Letterman

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. — Raymond Chandler

The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume. — Tony Hayward

Essex raised its ugly head. When i was a scholarship boy at the local grammar, son of a city-hall toiler on the make, this country was synonymous with liberty, success, and Cambridge. Now look at it. Shopping malls and housing estates pursue their creeping invasion of our ancient land. A North Sea wind snatched frilly clouds in its teeth and scarpered off to the midlands. The countryside proper began at last. My mother had a cousin out here, her family had a big house. I think they moved to Winnipeg for a better life. There! There, in the shadow of that DIY warehouse, once stood a row of walnut trees where me and Pip Oakes - a childhood chum who died aged thirteen under the wheels of an oil tanker - varnished a canoe one summer and sailed it alone the Say. Sticklebacks in jars,. There, right there, around that bend we lit a fire and cooked beans and potatoes wrapped in silver foil! Come back, oh, come back! Is one glimpse all I get? — David Mitchell

The forest rose about this open glade like an amphitheatre, in golden terraces of horsechestnut and beech. The big nuts dropped velvety and brown, as if they had been soaked in oil, and disappeared in the dry leaves below. Little black yew trees, that had not been visible in the green of summer, stood out among the curly yellow brakes. Through the grey netting of the beech twigs, stiff holly bushes glittered. — Willa Cather

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings. — Rainn Wilson

Have you been following the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Or as we call it now, the Dead Sea. — David Letterman

On almost every environmental issue I care about, in fact, I've been wrong at one point or another. I used to think that climate change was no big deal, that most environmental problems were massive exaggerations, that oil reserves were effectively unlimited, and more. — Ramez Naam

Today much of anti-biofuel "science" - including the false claim that biofuels need more energy to make than they contain - has been shown to be complete hogwash, bought and paid for by big oil. — Josh Tickell

Three big assumptions proved wrong: one, that the Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators; two, that oil would soon pay for Iraqi's rebuilding; and, three, that we have plenty of troops, weapons, and equipment for the postwar situation. — John Spratt

For too long, the system has been biased in favor of oil and gas developers: sweetheart lease deals, generous subsidies and a regulatory process so slanted in favor of Big Oil that often permit reviews are simply waived. — Chellie Pingree

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas. — George W. Bush