Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Do you know what Thoreau said? Thoreau saw the railroad coming and it gave him the shakes. Not many people had the shakes at that time; plenty of them have got them now, because what we’ve done is just an extension of the railroad that went past Walden Pond. Thoreau said, “They think they’re going to go on with this business of stocks and spades until everybody will ride. But when the whistle blows and the smoke clears away, it will be found that a few are riding and the rest run over.”

— Wendell Berry in a 1974 speech