Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “There is nothing like the diversion of travel for one who is mentally fagged.”

— Erik Larson

252. “Five months after the disaster, Charles Lauriat wrote a book about his experience, entitled The Lusitania’s Last Voyage.”

— Erik Larson

253. “We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down.”

— Erik Larson

254. “Some captains made no attempt to save the lives of merchant seamen; others went so far as to tow lifeboats towards land. One u-boat commander sent the captain of a torpedoed ship three bottles of wine to ease the long row ashore.”

— Erik Larson

255. “Kennedy, in turn, was not well liked in London. The wife of Churchill’s foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, detested the ambassador for his pessimism about Britain’s chances for survival and his prediction that the RAF would quickly be crushed. She wrote, “I could have killed him with pleasure.”

— Erik Larson

256. “Hindsight tells us that during that fragile time the course of history could so easily have been changed. Why, then, did no one change it? Why did it take so long to recognize the real danger posed by Hitler and his regime?”

— Erik Larson

257. “All were wealthy and at the peaks of their careers, but all also bore the scars of nineteenth-century life, their pasts full of wrecked rail cars, fevers, and the premature deaths of loved ones.”

— Erik Larson

258. “U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.”

— Erik Larson

259. “He wrote: “Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.” The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.”

— Erik Larson

260. “It was as if a load had suddenly been lifted from the German soul. The sense of relief could almost be felt in the air. Papen had put into words what thousands upon thousands of his countrymen had locked up in their hearts for fear of the awful penalties of speech.”

— Erik Larson

261. “Gleichschaltung.”

— Erik Larson

262. “His quest to create a powerful first impression was good showmanship, but it also exposed the aesthetic despot residing within.”

— Erik Larson

263. “It was because I had seen so much of injustice and domineering little groups, as well as heard the complaints of so many of the best people of the country, that I ventured as far as my position would allow and by historical analogy warned men as solemnly as possible against half-educated leaders being permitted to lead nations into war.”

— Erik Larson

264. “Among a list of measures effective for inducing vomiting, she included: “Injections of tobacco into the anus through a pipe stem.”

— Erik Larson

265. “No one knows who coined the term, but it fit, and the Montauk became the first building to be called a skyscraper.”

— Erik Larson

266. “Damn those bloody Huns for breaking up an enjoyable party.”

— Erik Larson

267. “Later, Dodd wrote a description of Hitler in his diary. “He is romantic-minded and half-informed about great historical events and men in Germany.” He had a “semi-criminal” record. “He has definitely said on a number of occasions that a people survives by fighting and dies as a consequence of peaceful policies. His influence is and has been wholly belligerent.”

— Erik Larson

268. “She tooled around the city in an electric car.”

— Erik Larson

269. “Mackworth turned to Conner and said, “I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organized affair.” “So did I,” Conner replied, “but I’ve learnt a devil of a lot in the last five minutes.”

— Erik Larson

270. “Churchill was particularly insistent that ministers compose memoranda with brevity and limit their length to one page or less. “It is slothful not to compress your thoughts,” he said.”

— Erik Larson

271. “Ferris had created more than simply an engineering novelty. Like the inventors of the elevator, he had conjured an entirely new physical sensation.”

— Erik Larson

272. “At intervals as he rounded the room he would stop “to release some priceless quotation or thought.” During one such pause, Churchill likened a man’s life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. “As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage.” He danced on.”

— Erik Larson

273. “It was night time, Inspector Thompson wrote. Those in the plane were transfixed with delight to look down from the windows and see the amazing spectacle of a whole city lighted up. Washington represented something immensely precious. Freedom, hope, strength. We had not seen an illuminated city for two years. My heart filled.”

— Erik Larson

274. “Late that afternoon, he devoted two quiet hours to his Old South, losing himself in another, more chivalrous age.”

— Erik Larson

275. “Torpedoes were expensive, and heavy. Each cost up to $ 5,000 – over $ 100,000 today – and weighed over three thousand pounds, twice the weight of a Ford Model T.”

— Erik Larson

276. “Messersmith, in a dispatch, observed that even smart, well-traveled Germans will “sit and calmly tell you the most extraordinary fairy tales.”

— Erik Larson

277. “I have never liked Americans, except odd ones. In the mass I have always thought them dreadful!”

— Erik Larson

278. “The dinner became infamous. Later, in midsummer, Britain’s Ambassador Phipps would observe in his diary that of the seven people who sat down to dine at the Regendanz mansion that night, four had been murdered, one had fled the country under threat of death, and another had been imprisoned in a concentration camp. Phipps wrote, “The list of casualties for one dinner party might make even a Borgia envious.”

— Erik Larson

279. “As labor strife increased and the economy faltered, the general level of violence rose.”

— Erik Larson

280. “In which building is the pope?” one woman asked. She was overheard by writer Teresa Dean, who wrote a daily column from the fair. “The pope is not here, madame,” the guard said. “Where is he?” “In Italy, Europe, madame.” The woman frowned. “Which way is that?” Convinced now that the woman was joking, the guard cheerfully quipped, “Three blocks under the lagoon.” She said, “How do I get there?”

— Erik Larson

281. “The list of appetizers included stuffed eagles’ eggs.”

— Erik Larson

282. “She loved “their funny stiff dancing, listening to their incomprehensible and guttural tongue, and watching their simple gestures, natural behavior and childlike eagerness for life.”

— Erik Larson

283. “The wheel had consumed 28,416 pounds of bolts in its assembly;.”

— Erik Larson

284. “With that news her life had been abruptly, irrevocably altered. Come.”

— Erik Larson

285. “Here she joined the universal struggle shared by men and women throughout time, to temper rejection so as not to lose a friend forever.”

— Erik Larson

286. “New York’s perennial attraction was shopping.”

— Erik Larson

287. “He disliked the social obligations of the captaincy.”

— Erik Larson

288. “One young navy man, Ludovic Kennedy, later to achieve fame as a journalist and broadcaster, recalled how “when we heard it, we knew in an instant, that everything would be all right.”

— Erik Larson

289. “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.”

— Erik Larson

290. “Churchill did not and frankly could not manage the staggering pressure of directing the war by himself. He relied heavily on others, even if sometimes these others merely served as an audience on whom he could test his thoughts and plans.”

— Erik Larson

291. “Nor could one have imagined that such a terroristic performance as that of June 30 would have been permitted in modern times.” Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger. Even the army had stood by, despite the murder of two of its generals.”

— Erik Larson

292. “Mayor Harrison warned that the ranks of the unemployed had swollen to an alarming degree. “If Congress does not give us money we will have riots that will shake this country,” he said. Two weeks later workers scuffled with police outside City Hall. It was a minor confrontation, but the Tribune called it a riot.”

— Erik Larson

293. “Not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.” That word: television. In 1900.”

— Erik Larson

294. “It was one thing to read newspaper stories about Hitler’s erratic behavior and his government’s brutality toward Jews, communists, and other opponents, for throughout America there was a widely held belief that such reports must be exaggerated, that surely no modern state could behave in such a manner.”

— Erik Larson

295. “All he asked of life was the best of everything.”

— Erik Larson

296. “Even the language used by Hitler and party officials was weirdly inverted. The term “fanatical” became a positive trait. Suddenly it connoted what philologist Victor Klemperer, a Jewish resident of Dresden, described as a “happy mix of courage and fervent devotion.”

— Erik Larson

297. “The Fringes of Power; the work.”

— Erik Larson

298. “Riders on the Ferris Wheel got the clearest, most horrific view of what happened next.”

— Erik Larson

299. “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing! Depart, I say, and let us have done with you! In the name of God, go!”

— Erik Larson

300. “He had become the living representation of how men liked to think of themselves: one man doing an awful duty and doing it well, against the odds.”

— Erik Larson