“Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south.”

“Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear — United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.”

“More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America with straightaways, cloverleaf turns, bridges, and elongated parkways. Its impact on the American economy—the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up—was beyond calculation.”

“The Interstate Highway System wound a key and then released a perpetual motion machine.”

“President Eisenhower … gave the nation its biggest construction project, the huge interstate-highway program that changed the shape of American society and made possible the expansion of the suburban middle class.”

“The Interstate Highway Act literally brought Americans closer together. We were connected city-to-city, town-to-town, family-to-family, as we had never been before. That law did more to bring Americans together than any other law this century...”

“The Interstate System works; in fact, it has exceeded its original scope and mission by revolutionizing the nation's logistics, changing the way we travel, and knitting the country's regions closer together. Thanks to constant redesign and reconstruction, the Interstate remains a vital part of the U.S. economy.”

“Dwight D. Eisenhower changed America forever with the creation of the interstate highway program.”

“Congestion and repairs aside, the Interstates have knit us together in subtle and unanticipated ways.  Just as the railroad first introduced us to the country a century ago, so the Interstates have opened it up to everyone.  Their very popularity has confirmed our love of the road, which is really a love of exploration.  We are still pioneers, seeking new horizons from the driver's seat.”

“Along with the GI Bill, which educated and housed Eisenhower's fellow veterans, the Interstate System has proved to be by far the most important economic-development strategy of the federal government.”

“The Interstate program was the last New Deal Program and the first space program, combining the economic and social ambitions of the former with the technological and organizational virtuosity, the sense of national prestige and achievement, of the latter.”

“Archeologists of some future age will study [the freeway] . . . to understand who we were.”

“The Interstate System is the most grandiose and indelible signature that Americans have ever scratched across the face of their land.”