Top 200 David Grann Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “When a press gang surrounded a church in London, in 1755, in pursuit of a seaman inside, he managed, according to a newspaper report, to slip away disguised in “an old gentlewoman’s long cloak, hood and bonnet.”

— David Grann

102. “Sir Walter Raleigh had envisioned: “Whosoever commands the seas commands the trade of the world; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world.”

— David Grann

103. “Nevertheless, impatient settlers massacred several of the Osage, mutilating their bodies and scalping them. An Indian Affairs agent said, “The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?”

— David Grann

104. “The second insurance company approved the policy after Hale took Roan to the Pawhuska doctor again for the required medical examination. The doctor recalled asking Hale, “Bill, what are you going to do, kill this Indian?” Hale, laughing, said, “Hell, yes.”

— David Grann

105. “In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded the first American private detective agency; in advertisements, the company’s motto, “We Never Sleep,” was inscribed under a large, unblinking, Masonic-like eye, which gave rise to the term “private eye.”

— David Grann

106. “The tribe, led by one of its greatest chiefs, James Bigheart – who spoke seven languages, among them Sioux, French, English, and Latin, and who had taken to wearing a suit –.”

— David Grann

107. “In 1894, when Mollie was seven, her parents were informed that they had to enroll her in the St. Louis School, a Catholic boarding institution for girls that had been opened in Pawhuska, which was two days’ journey.”

— David Grann

108. “In 1757, Admiral John Byng would be executed after being found guilty of failing to “do his utmost” during battle, prompting Voltaire to remark in Candide that the English believed it proper to “kill an admiral from time to time in order to encourage the others.”

— David Grann

109. “Edgar Allan Poe’s Inspector Auguste Dupin –.”

— David Grann

110. “Mathews bitterly recalled reporters “enjoying the bizarre impact of wealth on the Neolithic men, with the usual smugness and wisdom of the unlearned.”

— David Grann

111. “Tom became increasingly adept at dealing with what he called “rascality”: cow rustlers, horse thieves, scalawags, pimps, rumrunners, stagecoach robbers, desperadoes, and other human transgressors. When.”

— David Grann

112. “Bold were the Men who on the Ocean first Spread the new Sails, when Ship wreck was the worst: More Dangers Now from MAN alone we find, Than from the Rocks, the Billows, and the Wind.”

— David Grann

113. “The men wondered whether Cheap, like Captain Kidd and Commodore Anson, understood that the secret to establishing command was not tyrannizing men but convincing, sympathizing, and inspiring them – or if he would be one of those despots who ruled by the lash.”

— David Grann

114. “One government study estimated that before 1925 guardians had pilfered at least $8 million directly from the restricted accounts of their Osage wards. “The blackest chapter in the history of this State will be the Indian guardianship over these estates,” an Osage leader said, adding, “There has been millions – not thousands – but millions of dollars of many of the Osages dissipated and spent by the guardians themselves.”

— David Grann

115. “To “toe the line” derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To “pipe down” was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and “piping hot” was his call for meals.”

— David Grann

116. “The crooked guardians and administrators of Osage estates were typically among the most prominent white citizens:.”

— David Grann

117. “Exploration, however, no longer seemed aimed at some outward discovery; rather, it was directed inward, to what guidebooks and brochures called “camping and wilderness therapy” and “personal growth through adventure.”

— David Grann

118. “Hale was determined to transform not only himself but the wilderness from which he came – to cross-fence the open prairie and to create a network of trading posts and towns.”

— David Grann

119. “If J. Edgar Hoover used the Osage murder probe as a showcase for the bureau, a series of sensational crimes in the 1930s stoked public fears and enabled Hoover to turn the organization into the powerful force recognized today.”

— David Grann

120. “By portraying the natives as both magnificent and less than human, Europeans tried to pretend that their brutal mission of conquest was somehow righteous and heroic.”

— David Grann

121. “His chest was often bare, and his head was shaved, except for a strip of hair that ran from the crown to his neck and that stood straight up, like the crest of a Spartan’s helmet.”

— David Grann

122. “The instruction was intended to assimilate Mollie into white society and transform her into what the authorities conceived of as the ideal woman.”

— David Grann

123. “By 1877, there were virtually no more American buffalo to hunt – a development hastened by the authorities who encouraged settlers to eradicate the beasts, knowing that, in the words of an army officer, “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”

— David Grann

124. “He emerges in our story like one of those settlers who arrives on the American frontier with no discernable history – a man to be reckoned with by his present deeds alone.”

— David Grann

125. “A “scuttlebutt” was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was “three sheets to the wind” when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To “turn a blind eye” became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.”

— David Grann

126. “The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.”

— David Grann

127. “After White told Hoover that he had occasionally given an agent a 100 rating, Hoover responded sharply, writing, “I regret that I am unable to bring myself to believe that any agent in the jurisdiction of the Bureau is entitled to a perfect or 100% rating.”

— David Grann

128. “The jurors were willing to punish the men for killing an American Indian, but they would not hang them for it.”

— David Grann

129. “She wore moccasins, leggings a cloth skirt and a blanket around her shoulders, and she painted the part in the middle of her hair red to symbolize the path of the sun.”

— David Grann

130. “Theodore Roosevelt had already warned what would befall an Indian who refused his allotment: “Let him, like these whites, who will not work, perish from the face of the earth which he cumbers.”

— David Grann

131. “We all impose some coherence – some meaning – on the chaotic events of our existence.”

— David Grann

132. “Over the next two decades, the Osage were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land, ultimately finding refuge in a 50-by-125-mile area in southeastern Kansas. And it was in this place where Mollie’s mother and father had come of age.”

— David Grann

133. “He had made a fire – that spark of civilization – and they huddled around the flames, trying to warm themselves.”

— David Grann

134. “The three women spoke candidly about the family’s history and shared with me a video recording of Ernest that was taken shortly before he died, in which he talked about Mollie and his past.”

— David Grann

135. “Was God seeing the things they did out here? Bulkeley still sought solace from The Christian’s Pattern, but a passage in it warned, “Hadst thou a clear conscience, thou could not fear death. It were better to avoid sin than to flee death.” Yet was it a sin to want to live?”

— David Grann

136. “Whale bones were honed into chisels and barbed tips for harpoons and spears; dolphins’ jawbones made fine combs. The skin and sinewy tendons from seals and whales offered string for bows, slingshots, and fishing nets. Seal bladders served as pouches. Plants were woven into baskets. Bark was carved into containers – and used as torches. Shells became everything from scoops to knives sharp enough to cut through bone. And the hides from seals and sea lions provided.”

— David Grann

137. “But within four years Jefferson had compelled the Osage to relinquish their territory between the Arkansas River and the Missouri River. The Osage chief stated that his people “had no choice, they must either sign the treaty or be declared enemies of the United States.” Over the next two decades, the Osage were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land, ultimately finding refuge in a 50-by-125-mile area in southeastern Kansas.”

— David Grann

138. “The ancient city, with its network of roads and bridges and temples, was believed to be hidden in the Amazon, the largest jungle in the world. In an age of airplanes and satellites, the area remains one of the last blank spaces on the map.”

— David Grann

139. “They were consumed with their own daily struggles and ambitions – with working the ship, with gaining promotions and securing money for their families, and, ultimately, with survival. But it is precisely such unthinking complicity that allows empires to endure. Indeed, these imperial structures require it: thousands and thousands of ordinary people, innocent or not, serving – and even sacrificing themselves for – a system many of them rarely question.”

— David Grann

140. “In a lethal, floating chess game, these pieces were deployed around the globe to achieve what Sir Walter Raleigh had envisioned: “Whosoever commands the seas commands the trade of the world; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world.”

— David Grann

141. “Anson, who was soon promoted to rear admiral, was awarded about ninety thousand pounds.”

— David Grann

142. “Deliberate and thoughtful, he had an ability to study each situation before choosing a course of action.”

— David Grann

143. “The archive reflects the human need to document every deed and directive, to place a veil of administrative tidiness over the disorder of famines and plagues and natural disasters and crimes and wars.”

— David Grann

144. “He is thoroughly professional about his job. He is a serious, pleasant man, and he has trained himself to control his emotions.”

— David Grann

145. “Five and a half years. That’s how long the three men had been gone from England.”

— David Grann

146. “So the Osage bought the territory for seventy cents per acre and, in the early 1870s, began their exodus.”

— David Grann

147. “An entire subgenre of self-help literature devoted to analyzing his methods emerged, books with titles like Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition. Another example, Shackleton: Leadership Lessons from Antarctica, included such chapters as “Be My Tent Mate: Keep Dissidents Close,” “Camaraderie at 20 Below Zero: Creating an Optimal Work Environment,” and “Sailing Uncharted Waters: Adapt and Innovate.”

— David Grann

148. “The midshipmen apprised Cheap of what had happened and told him about the island.”

— David Grann

149. “They were taught piano, penmanship, geography, and arithmetic, the world distilled into strange new symbols.”

— David Grann

150. “The average man-of-war was estimated by a leading shipwright to last only fourteen years.”

— David Grann