Top 100 Quotes About Coal
#1. The locomotives are black. The coal is black. The tracks are black. The night is black. So what am I going to do with color?
O. Winston Link
#2. He said, See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner."
-Peeta Mellark in The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
#5. But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea.
William Langland
#6. Coal research and development provides huge benefits for the nation, and pay for itself many times over through taxes flowing back to the Treasury from expanded economic activity.
Tim Holden
#7. Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.
Jimmy Breslin
#8. Rick Santorum is the grandson of a coal miner. His dad was the manager of a V.A. hospital.
Foster Friess
#9. The poet, distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it make itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body.
Eduardo Galeano
#10. Writing is like a lump of coal. Put it under enough pressure and polish it enough and you might just end up with a diamond. Otherwise, you can burn it to keep warm.
A.J. Dalton
#11. The real requirement, if we are to avoid runaway global warming, is probably 80% by 2030, and almost no burning whatever of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) by 2050.
Gwynne Dyer
#12. In the world of energy politics, the sudden vanishing of the word 'coal' is a remarkable and unprecedented event.
Jeff Goodell
#13. Neighborhood grocery stores, coal yards, gas stations, cheap taverns, big old rundown houses, a few churches with blank embarrassed faces.
Ross Macdonald
#14. It is a miracle if we can find true friends, and it is a miracle if you have enough food to eat, and it is a miracle if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do ... Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal
Shirley A. Moore
#15. More coal-to-liquid means more energy and a stronger economy.
Peter Roskam
#16. Doubtless Catherine marked the difference between her friends, as one came in and the other went out. The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley; and his voice and greeting were as opposite as his aspect.
Emily Bronte
#17. If stupid hippies hadn't killed nuclear power, we'd have nuclear power plants, safer and cheaper than coal-fired plants, all over, and electric cars really would be zero emissions.
Penn Jillette
#18. Not only will the development of coal-to-liquid and environmentally friendly sequestration technologies increase our energy security, but these advancements will also help create better, higher-paying American jobs.
Peter Roskam
#19. For though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.
Thomas Paine
#20. Americans are worried about pollution - oil trains running through their towns, fracking in their neighborhoods, coal dust in their air. They're worried about what the future will look like for their children if carbon pollution continues unchecked.
Frances Beinecke
#21. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking,and there are soft,coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts
Markus Zusak
#22. Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
Blaise Cendrars
#23. The fact that they stole their whole shtick from Woody Guthrie and the coal-mining bards. While the alternative nation meows about personal fashion angst, the Appalachian nation still sings about unemployment.
Jim Goad
#24. Chile is not a rich country in terms of gas, or oil or coal, but we are extremely rich in terms of the energies of the future.
Sebastian Pinera
#25. Here in the United States, we have between 250 and 300 years of a coal supply. That is more than the amount of recoverable oil contained in the entire world.
Tim Holden
#26. As the heat of the coal differs from the coal itself, so do memory, perception, judgment, emotion, and will, differ from the brain which is the instrument of thought.
Annie Besant
#27. The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town.
Christopher Bollen
#28. Glittering news chips in men's sideburns and women with braided microfilament glo-strands stepping around me, laughing with silver lipsticks. Kaleidoscope streets: lights and traffic and dust and coal diesel exhaust. Muddy and wet.
Jason Heller
#29. Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the Arctic are a call to action.
Susan Collins
#30. Even the biggest coal boosters have long admitted that coal is a dying industry - the fight has always been over how fast and how hard the industry will fall.
Jeff Goodell
#31. Coal is absolutely critical to our nation's economic health and global competitiveness.
Jerry Costello
#32. What makes tar sands particularly odious is that the energy you get out in the end, per unit carbon dioxide, is poor. It's equivalent to burning coal in your automobile.
James Hansen
#33. We are all fed from hundreds and thousands of hands. Often we do not know whose they are nor how they work. Only a few of us ever visualize the hands that grope in the coal mines or push levers in the mills or handle axes in the lumber camp.
Louis MacNeice
#34. To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
#35. Social media is the ultimate canary in the coal mine
Jay Baer
#36. The experience reminds me of a favorite saying: Most of the yield from research efforts comes from the coal that is mined while looking for diamonds.
Paul D. Boyer
#38. I didn't even watch the soaps when I was in them because it's like a coal miner coming home and staring at the coal scuttle - I was never a great lover of watching myself act.
Ross Kemp
#39. Everyone of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal, pouring off every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.
Bob Dylan
#40. Fierce-looking, a coal-eyed brunette with a gaze direct as lasers. She
Tess Gerritsen
#41. I remember going to see my dad pitch against other coal-mining teams, and he was successful with the knuckleball. I saw how bad guys would look like swinging, and how guys talked about how he could throw every day and didn't hurt his arm. That's how I grew up learning.
Phil Niekro
#42. Affection is a coal that must be cooled; Else, suffered, it will set the heart on fire.
William Shakespeare
#43. Try everything. Do everything. Nuclear. Biomass. Coal. Solar. You name it. I support them all.
T. Boone Pickens
#44. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge.
George W. Bush
#45. The modern city consists of ... dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gasses, torn by the noise ...
Alexis Carrel
#46. Carbon capture and storage, its commercial development.. is going to be the key to the future of coal. If it is successful commercially, then the Australian coal sector will be a center of prosperity and growth; if it's not successful then it won't be. I think in the long run it's as simple as that.
Ross Garnaut
#47. I don't think you have a choice but to pull CO2 back that has already made it out, or is about to make it out, because we are not overnight shutting down all the coal plants.
Klaus Lackner
#48. The hatred you're carrying is a live coal in your heart - far more damaging to yourself than to them.
Lawana Blackwell
#49. In the morning
it shuffles, unhurried,
across the wet fields
in its black slippers,
in its coal-colored coat
with the white stripe like a river
running down its spine
Mary Oliver
#50. Mountaintop removal coal operations enrich only a handful of elites while impoverishing everyone else in their proximity.
Gloria Reuben
#51. I think someone in the union has the right to a private vote, and that's why I'm anti-card check. I grew up in a union family. My grandfather was a coal miner; he was in the union.
Jim Renacci
#52. Coal and oil lobbyists added fossil fuels to a bill aimed at helping American manufacturers, so they too could claim 'manufacturing' tax deductions.
Bernie Sanders
#53. Tony Abbott might think coal's good for humanity, of course it was an important driver in the story of the Australian nation. But when we're talking about the 21st Century and those industries that are gonna take us forward, it won't be coal.
Richard Di Natale
#54. From a Darwinian perspective, it is clear what pain is doing. It's a warning: 'Don't do that again.' If you burn yourself, you're never going to pick up a live coal again.
Richard Dawkins
#55. Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal.
Thomas Friedman
#56. Here in Indiana and in many states throughout the union, we rely on coal to power our homes and provide good-paying middle class jobs - like the one my family relied on when I was a kid. The coal mine helped put food on our table and helped me pursue an education and realize the American Dream.
Larry Bucshon
#57. Since time immemorial it had been the custom before a sea battle for the men to wash and don clean clothes in case of being wounded. This was all the more necessary under these circumstances, as many of them were still covered with coal dust.
Richard Hough
#58. Coal boosters like to tout coal as cheap and plentiful - well, not anymore. At least not in China.
Jeff Goodell
#59. And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay"
"Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.
John Denver
#60. [Justice George Sutherland said, in the majority opinion for the Carter Coal case] 'One who does a thing in order to avoid a monetary penalty does not agree; he yields to compulsion precisely the same as though he did so to avoid a term in jail.
Jim Powell
#61. For a boy of ten, used to the coal bings and rust-coloured burns of Cowdenbeath, the fields and woodland of Kingswood, with its overgrown but stately avenue of copper-barked sequoias, felt like a local version of paradise.
John Burnside
#62. We hope that all coal mines will learn from the bitter lessons these accidents have taught and will strengthen their safety precautions.
Li Yizhong
#63. If you want your energy bills to go up, you should support an ever greater dependence on foreign oil, because the rate of new discoveries is declining as demand in China and India is growing, and the price of oil and thus the price of coal will go sky high.
Al Gore
#64. He could taste the familiar tang of museum air - an arid, deionized essence that carried a faint hint of carbon - the product of industrial, coal-filter dehumidifiers that ran around the clock to counteract the corrosive carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors.
Dan Brown
#65. No one wants to stoke coal if he can regulate an oil valve instead.
Stavros Niarchos
#66. Investing one cent more in oil, coal and gas is investing in the death of society, and the in the death of our children.
Kumi Naidoo
#67. The air was thick with coal dust. Was it possible that men breathed this all day? That must be why miners coughed and spat constantly.
Ken Follett
#68. Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels.
Nikola Tesla
#69. The canary bird in the coal mine theory of the arts: artists should be treasured as alarm systems.
Kurt Vonnegut
#71. One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England.
Glenn T. Seaborg
#72. In 1950 the European Union was officially born in the form of a German-dominated cartel of coal and steel, run of course by a cross-border French-dominated administration located in Brussels. Its name? The European Steel and Coal Community.
Yanis Varoufakis
#73. Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.
James M. Cain
#74. Climate is a global issue. Coal is still the energy that is being used more than anything else to make electricity. The United States is using less as we're turning more to gas. But, around the world, that's what they're using.
Ian Bremmer
#75. Without missing a beat he said, "This year, Santa, I'd like a pony and an Easy-Bake Oven."
Raja grunted and pushed him off to the side. "You'll be getting coal in a place where it hurts if you ever attempt to sit in my lap again.
Karsten Knight
#77. To deal with local pollution, China has put on the agenda the capping of coal, which has long been a sensitive issue.
Ma Jun
#78. Excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.
Oscar Wilde
#79. Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.
Ross Gelbspan
#80. Smoke poured from every chimney, for the day was cold. The thought of all those coal-grates and wood-stoves made me wary of fire, for these buildings were little more than tinder and brown paper, putting on airs of architecture.
Robert Charles Wilson
#81. Compared to coal, which generates almost half the electricity in the United States, natural gas is indeed a cleaner, less polluting fuel. But compared to, say, solar, it's filthy. And of course there is nothing renewable about natural gas.
Jeff Goodell
#82. I'd like to say that right now, in the last few years, the Democrats have been closer - have been more pro-environment. The coal industry is pretty well entrenched in the Republican Party and that's one of the things that we need to phase out.
Ted Turner
#83. Everyone knows that we're doing a science experiment with Earth. And the No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 contributors to it are the mining and burning of coal.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#84. The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks.
John Burnside
#85. Imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine.
Hector Berlioz
#86. I come from a coal-mining, working-class background. My father was a coal miner.
Tom Jones
#87. I often think I would like to come even closer to home and write about somewhere like Wales, for example - which we in England tend to be a little snooty about. That's where the coal comes from and that sort of thing.
John Gimlette
#88. But don't worry; as I've been saying - and this has been very clever of me, I'm sure you'll agree - if you put enough pressure on coal, it'll turn to pearls!
Suzanne Collins
#89. Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.
Malcolm Forbes
#90. I couldn't describe the smells of West Virginia, even if I tried. It has something to do with the leaves composting in the woods, the cold trickle of little creeks and waterfalls, the ferns greening up everything. But somewhere deep below, I can smell the rock and the coal this state is built on.
Heather Day Gilbert
#91. Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world.
Tony Abbott
#92. I think of doing a series as very hard work. But then I've talked to coal miners, and that's really hard work.
William Shatner
#93. Perfection is the natural consequence of eternity: wait long enough, and anything will realize its potential. Coal becomes diamonds, sand becomes pearls, apes become men. It's simply not given to us, in one lifetime, to see those consummations, and so every failure becomes a reminder of death.
Ian Caldwell
#94. Oh be careful! There they go again!" said the old queen as his string broke spilling his balls over the floor ... "Stop them will you, James, you worthless old shit! Don't just stand there and let the master's balls roll into the coal-bin!
William S. Burroughs
#95. Even though on the outside we glittered like gold, inside we were almost as black as coal. Sometimes the glitter people saw was only the shattered pieces reflecting among the broken glass.
Tracy Krimmer
#96. It is easy enough to be moral after a good dinner beside a snug coal fire, and with our hearts well warmed with fine old port.
Henry Mayhew
#97. I am left alone with the beautiful dark coal black eyes, pale white skin, dark wavy hair man and I CAN'T BREATHE!
R.L. Mankin
#98. We Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build a fire, we dig a little coal. But when we run out of all these things, then we will find out just how good we really are.
Will Rogers
#99. I think a portfolio standard should go beyond wind, solar and geothermal energy to include renewable energy like hydropower and clean alternatives such as coal gasification, clean coal, nuclear energy and, finally, credits for achieving new levels of efficiency and conservation.
Pete Domenici
#100. The coal industry is an even larger part of the Australian economy than it is of the American, and it has an enormous amount of political power.
Jeff Goodell
