Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “She saw Hitler as “a clown who looked like Charlie Chaplin.” Like many others in America at this time and elsewhere in the world, she could not imagine him lasting very long or being taken seriously.”

— Erik Larson

302. “During heavy rains, river water flowed in a greasy plume far out into Lake Michigan, to the towers that marked the intake pipes for the city’s drinking water.”

— Erik Larson

303. “Long before the fair’s end, people began mourning its inevitable passage. Mary Hartwell Catherwood wrote, “What shall we do when this Wonderland is closed? – when it disappears – when the enchantment comes to an end?” One lady manager, Sallie Cotton of North Carolina, a mother of six children staying in Chicago for the summer, captured in her diary a common worry: that after seeing the fair, “everything will seem small and insignificant.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

305. “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

306. “As in a great castle which has long contended with time, the mighty central mass of the donjon towered up intact and seemingly everlasting. But the outworks and the battlements had fallen away, and its imperious ruler dwelt only in the special apartments and corridors with which he had a lifelong familiarity.”

— Erik Larson

307. “Do you think all these people would be booking passage on the Lusitania if they thought she could be caught by a German submarine? Why it’s the best joke I’ve heard in many days, this talk of torpedoing the Lusitania.′ Both Vanderbilt and Turner laughed.”

— Erik Larson

308. “Whether Venetia and Asquith had ever had a physical relationship remained for all but them an unresolved question, although if word volume alone were a measure of romantic intensity, Asquith was a man lost irreclaimably to love.”

— Erik Larson

309. “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

310. “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

311. “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

312. “Tea was comfort and history; above all, it was English. As long as there was tea, there was England.”

— Erik Larson

313. “Ned watched her. She was young and pretty – a “handsome blonde,” as he later described her.”

— Erik Larson

314. “Ferris, himself fed up with construction delays and Burnham’s pestering, had told Gronau to turn the wheel or tear it off the tower.”

— Erik Larson

315. “Contrary to the predictions of many students of international problems, I feel fairly certain that we shall not have war in the near future.”

— Erik Larson

316. “A large rubber company was told it must provide proof that it had no Jewish employees before it could submit bids to municipalities.”

— Erik Larson

317. “It was the first in a sequence of impossibly rich and voluminous banquets whose menus raised the question of whether any of the city’s leading men could possibly have a functional artery.”

— Erik Larson

318. “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

319. “Mistrust must be sown of the plutocratic ruling caste, and fear must be instilled of what is about to befall. All this must be laid on as thick as possible.”

— Erik Larson

320. “Captain Hall had no direct control over Room 40 – as of early 1915 his intelligence division and Room 40 were separate entities – but his name more than any other would come to be associated with its achievements.”

— Erik Larson

321. “Americans coming to Germany will find themselves surrounded by influences of the Government and.”

— Erik Larson

322. “Hall withdrew the manuscript, though his notes and a number of completed chapters reside today in the Churchill Archives in Cambridge, England.”

— Erik Larson

323. “But within a week, the brush fire gusted into a firestorm, spiking fears, resurrecting animosities, triggering alliances and understandings, and setting long-laid plans in motion.”

— Erik Larson

324. “Asked later how this feat had been achieved, Morton answered, “If you had to jump six or seven feet, or certainly drown, it is surprising what ‘a hell of a long way’ even older people can jump.”

— Erik Larson

325. “In the 1880s Chicago was experiencing explosive growth that propelled land values to levels no one could have imagined, especially within the downtown “Loop,” named for the turn-around loops of streetcar lines.”

— Erik Larson

326. “It was the judgment of a skilled and experienced man, and although others might have acted differently and perhaps more successfully he ought not, in my opinion, to be blamed.” Mersey found Cunard’s.”

— Erik Larson

327. “Monday was an apple-crisp day with temperatures that never exceeded sixty-two degrees, under vivid cerulean skies.”

— Erik Larson

328. “French endurance was the cornerstone of British defensive strategy. That France might fall was beyond imagining.”

— Erik Larson

329. “Gompers was calling for fundamental change in the relationship between workers and their overseers. This was dangerous talk, to be suppressed at all costs.”

— Erik Larson

330. “For those passengers who did feel unsettled by the German warning, Cunard offered comforting words. Wrote passenger Ambrose B. Cross, “From the very first the ship’s people asseverated that we ran no danger, that we should run right away from any submarine, or ram her, and so on, so that the idea came to be regarded as a mild joke for lunch and dinner tables.”

— Erik Larson

331. “What most likely caused the second event was the rupture of a main steam line, carrying steam under extreme pressure. This was Turner’s theory from the beginning.”

— Erik Larson

332. “He feared that now he appeared naive.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

334. “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

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

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

— Erik Larson

339. “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

340. “Edith wrote later, “This was the accidental meeting which carried out the old adage of ’turn a corner and meet your fate.”

— Erik Larson

341. “The Admiralty was well aware the Lusitania would soon traverse these same waters but made no effort to provide specifics of the night’s events directly to Captain Turner.”

— Erik Larson

342. “You know, of course,” Dodd said, “that we have had difficulty now and then in the United States with Jews who had gotten too much of a hold on certain departments of intellectual and business life.”

— Erik Larson

343. “Let our hopes and aspirations awaken forces which in all time to come shall influence the welfare, the dignity, and the freedom of mankind. – Grover Cleveland.”

— Erik Larson

344. “The one firm rock on which everyone was willing to build for the last two years was the French army,” wrote Foreign Secretary Halifax in his diary, “and the Germans walked through it like they did through the Poles.”

— Erik Larson

345. “Under Stalin, peasants had been forced into vast collectives. Many resisted, and an estimated five million people – men, women, and children – simply disappeared, many shipped off to far-flung work camps.”

— Erik Larson

346. “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

347. “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

348. “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

349. “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

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

— Erik Larson