Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Germany issued a proclamation designating the waters around the British Isles an “area of war” in which all enemy ships would be subject to attack without warning.”

— Erik Larson

252. “It was conceived out of hubris and anxiety, at a time – 1903 – when Britain feared it was losing the race for dominance of the passenger-ship industry.”

— Erik Larson

253. “I had no delusions about Hitler when I was appointed to my post in Berlin,” he answered. “But I had at least hoped to find some decent people around Hitler. I am horrified to discover that the whole gang is nothing but a horde of criminals and cowards.”

— Erik Larson

254. “She and a friend joked about what to do if the ship were attacked. “Our stewardess laughed,” Mrs. Lines recalled, “and said we would not go down, but up, as we were well loaded with munitions.”

— Erik Larson

255. “As a reminder to himself and anyone who visited his office in the shanty, Burnham posted a sign over his desk bearing a single word: RUSH.”

— Erik Larson

256. “My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him.”

— Erik Larson

257. “It’s a hindrance to be lonely and isolated in one’s work. Ideas stimulate ideas, and the love of writing is contagious.” Martha.”

— Erik Larson

258. “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.”

— Erik Larson

259. “I have examined the laws of the United States carefully and I do not find any law which says that a white man shall be punished for killing a Chinaman.”

— Erik Larson

260. “He slashed her throat in a Van Gogh stroke.”

— Erik Larson

261. “On a crystalline fall day you can almost hear the tinkle of fine crystal, the rustle of silk and wool, almost smell the expensive cigars.”

— Erik Larson

262. “It’s not the bombs I’m scared of any more, it’s the weariness,” wrote a female civil servant in her Mass-Observation diary – “trying to work and concentrate with your eyes sticking out of your head like hat-pins, after being up all night. I’d die in my sleep, happily, if only I could sleep.”

— Erik Larson

263. “Indeed, anti-immigration sentiment in America would remain strong into 1938, when a Fortune poll reported that some two-thirds of those surveyed favored keeping refugees out of the country.”

— Erik Larson

264. “The decor of the house was by now legendary, and was fast becoming the model for a style of country home decor that emphasized color, comfort, and lack of formality. Its popularity prompted Mrs. Tree to create a home-design firm around the concept. Her future business partner would later describe her aesthetic as one of “pleasing decay.”

— Erik Larson

265. “Mankind is in grave danger, but democratic governments seem not to know what to do. If they do nothing, Western civilization, religious, personal and economic freedom are in grave danger.”

— Erik Larson

266. “There is nothing like the diversion of travel for one who is mentally fagged.”

— Erik Larson

267. “Only holders of a cipher “key” could divine the underlying text, but possessing the codebooks made the whole process of solving the messages far simpler. To exploit these treasures the Admiralty established Room 40.”

— Erik Larson

268. “They looked more like day laborers than seamen.”

— Erik Larson

269. “A boutonniere rested beside each plate. Everyone wore tuxedos. There was not a woman in sight.”

— Erik Larson

270. “The war began with the geopolitical equivalent of a brush fire.”

— Erik Larson

271. “Responsibility has already changed the primary leaders of the Party very considerably,” he wrote. “There is every evidence that they are becoming constantly more moderate.”

— Erik Larson

272. “But Hitler’s government was neither civil nor coherent, and the nation lurched from one inexplicable moment to another.”

— Erik Larson

273. “In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost. – DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy: Canto I.”

— Erik Larson

274. “Turner, that day, was master of one of the great greyhounds of the North Atlantic – and looked the part.”

— Erik Larson

275. “Churchill was in bed, “looking just like a rather nice pig, clad in a silk vest.”

— Erik Larson

276. “If you worked to advance the interests of the machine, the machine paid you back.”

— Erik Larson

277. “He insisted on keeping a Bren light machine gun in the trunk of his car, having vowed on numerous occasions that if the Germans came for him, he would take as many as possible with him to the grave.”

— Erik Larson

278. “Vanderbilt remarried, this time wedding Margaret Emerson, heiress to a trove of money that owed its existence to America’s awful diet and its gastric consequences, the Bromo-Seltzer fortune.”

— Erik Larson

279. “When the long shadows have all merged into one and the stars begin to gleam out over the lake and the domes of the palaces of the White City.”

— Erik Larson

280. “Recognizing that confidence and fearlessness were attitudes that could be adopted and taught by example, Churchill issued a directive to all ministers to put on a strong, positive front.”

— Erik Larson

281. “Suddenly everyone began paying attention to the phases of the moon. Bombers could attack by day, of course, but it was thought that after dark they would be able to find their targets only by moonlight. The full moon and its waxing and waning gibbous phases became known as the “bomber’s moon.”

— Erik Larson

282. “Here, as in other speeches, Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and, above all, more courageous.”

— Erik Larson

283. “Hindenburg – known widely as the Old Gentleman – remained the last counterbalance to Hitler’s power and several days before Dodd’s departure had made a public declaration of displeasure at Hitler’s attempts to suppress the Protestant Church.”

— Erik Larson

284. “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

285. “She lapsed into “melancholia,” a sweet name for depression.”

— Erik Larson

286. “So every night,” he said, “I slept with a torpedo and a puppy.”

— Erik Larson

287. “Far from a clamor for war, there existed a widespread, if naive, belief that war of the kind that had convulsed Europe in past centuries had become obsolete – that the economies of nations were so closely connected with one another that even if a war were to begin, it would end quickly.”

— Erik Larson

288. “His letter to Rice began, “I have on hand a great project for the World’s Fair in Chicago. I am going to build a vertically revolving wheel 250’ in dia.” Nowhere in this letter, however, did he reveal the true dimension of his vision:.”

— Erik Larson

289. “Never before in civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon the city streets and to work under alien roofs.”

— Erik Larson

290. “This, she found, was typical of a certain kind of German. “Whenever they come up against someone who will not stand for their arrogance, they climb down from their perch and behave,” she wrote.”

— Erik Larson

291. “Burnham’s frequent admonition: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” Burnham.”

— Erik Larson

292. “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

293. “It was truly a transitional moment: There he was, at the cusp of the twentieth century, using the telephone to send a telegram.”

— Erik Larson

294. “Clemmie dropped on him like a jaguar out of a tree.”

— Erik Larson

295. “Some critics argued men should not try to predict the weather, because it was God’s province; others that men could not predict the weather, because men were incompetent.”

— Erik Larson

296. “Stanley Baldwin, then deputy prime minister, gave the House of Commons a forecast of what was to come: “I think it is well for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.” The only effective defense lay in offense, he said, “which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.”

— Erik Larson

297. “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”

— Erik Larson

298. “In honor of the fair Kodak called the folding version of its popular model No. 4 box camera the Columbus. The photographs these new cameras created were fast becoming known as “snap-shots,” a term originally used by English hunters to describe a quick shot with a gun.”

— Erik Larson

299. “The exposition went with Westinghouse, and helped change the history of electricity.”

— Erik Larson

300. “The frontier may indeed have closed at last, as Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed in his history-making speech at the fair, but for that moment it stood there glittering in the sun like the track of a spent tear.”

— Erik Larson