a few quotes from old man Moses:
This was taken from a collection of interviews compiled by Earl Blackwell in 1973, quoting Moses in two parts from a 1970 interview:
The first:
- "Engineering is perhaps the second oldest profession. I am proud to have been associated in a small way with the successors to the artificers who, equipped only with such primitive instruments as the wheel, lever, and slaves, were able to dig, fashion, move, lift, and create civilizations which we are only now beginning to appreciate."
then, after laying this ear-lubricating foundation, he sticks everyone with this:
- "It is too bad that so much early engineering genius was wasted in placating vengeful gods and deifying phony pharaohs, but we have compounded worse felonies in modern times."
Another quotation from a different speech:
- "I'm not an administrative stooge who has to curry favor with the chief and sing for his supper. If you think you're right, why, stand up and say so!"
I find it interesting that Mr. Moses originally wanted to put a bridge where the Battery-Brooklyn Tunnel is. A second bridge linking Brooklyn to Manhattan would have been such a demeaning discredit to the time-immemorially monumental Brooklyn Bridge, a masterpiece that reached its completion just a few years before his birth. You'd think he'd have some sacred childhood sentiment.
Another interesting fact about the Battery-Brooklyn Tunnel is that the tubes reportedly were in place in 1939, but due to World War II, the tunnel remained unfinished until afterwards.