Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Erik Larson

303. “Minneapolis was small, somnolent, and full of Swedish and Norwegian farmers as charming as cornstalks.”

— Erik Larson

304. “I felt like a child, ebullient and careless, the intoxication of the new regime working like wine in me.”

— Erik Larson

305. “With that as my guiding question, I set out on what became a lengthy journey through the vast and tangled forest of Churchill scholarship, a realm of giant volumes, distorted facts, and bizarre conspiracy theories, to try to find my personal Churchill. As I’ve discovered with prior books, when you look at the past through a fresh lens, you invariably see the world differently and find new material and insights even along well-trodden paths.”

— Erik Larson

306. “As the crowd thundered, a man eased up beside a thin, pale woman with a bent neck. In the next instant Jane Addams realized her purse was gone. The great fair had begun.”

— Erik Larson

307. “It could be done, because it had to be done.”

— Erik Larson

308. “Always remember, Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”

— Erik Larson

309. “At his own home, however, Goebbels found himself increasingly mired, not unhappily, in preparations for the holiday. He and his wife, Magda, had six children, all of whose names began with H: Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig, and Heidrun, the last just a month and a half old. The couple also had an older son, Harald, from Magda’s previous marriage. The children were excited, as was Magda, “who thinks about nothing but Christmas,” Goebbels wrote.”

— Erik Larson

310. “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

311. “A ghostly virga of ice followed it through the night.”

— Erik Larson

312. “This revitalization over drink and dinner was something of a pattern, as Lord Halifax’s wife, Dorothy, had noted in the past: Churchill would be “silent, grumpy and remote” at the start of a meal, she wrote. “But mellowed by champagne and good food he became a different man, and a delightful and amusing companion.” After Clementine once criticized his drinking, he told her, “Always remember, Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”

— Erik Larson

313. “Berlin, moreover, was not yet the supercharged outpost it would become within the year. There existed at this time a widespread perception that Hitler’s government could not possibly endure. Germany’s military power was limited – its army, the Reichswehr, had only one hundred thousand men, no match for the military forces of neighboring France, let alone the combined might of France, England, Poland, and the Soviet Union.”

— Erik Larson

314. “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

315. “Dodd seemed unaware that he might be conjuring forces that could endanger his career. Rather he delighted in pricking the clubby sensibilities of his opponents. With clear satisfaction he told his wife, “Their chief protector” – presumably he meant Phillips or Welles – “is not a little disturbed. If he attacks it certainly is not in the open.”

— Erik Larson

316. “He added beneath his name a single word: “Finis.”

— Erik Larson

317. “One of the most persistent problems of the day was “offensive feet,” caused by the prevailing habit of washing feet only once a week. To combat this, Hollingsworth wrote, “Take one part muriatic acid to ten parts of water; rub the feet every night with this mixture before retiring to bed.” To rid your mouth of the odor of onions, drink strong coffee.”

— Erik Larson

318. “I think Rome at its worst had nothing on Chicago during those lurid days.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

320. “Roosevelt understood that the political costs of any public condemnation of Nazi persecution or any obvious effort to ease the entry of Jews into America were likely to be immense, because American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem.”

— Erik Larson

321. “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

322. “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

323. “Hitler had just announced his decision to withdraw Germany from the League of Nations and from a major disarmament conference that had been under way in Geneva, off and on, since February 1932.”

— Erik Larson

324. “In this their lives reflected the broader miasma suffusing the city beyond their garden wall.”

— 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. “The becomingness of everything that may be seen as a modestly contributive part of a grand whole.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

329. “What could a Prime Minister at that time and in such desperate conditions say that was not pathetically inadequate – or even downright dangerous?” To Battersby, it typified “the uniquely unpredictable magic that was Churchill” – his ability to transform “the despondent misery of disaster into a grimly certain stepping stone to ultimate victory.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

331. “But no matter how far Germany advanced or how much more territory it seized, Hitler would not prevail. The might of the British Empire – “nay, in a certain sense, the whole English-speaking world” – was on his trail, “bearing with them the swords of justice.”

— Erik Larson

332. “He joined the crew of the Lake Champlain, a small steam-powered cargo ship owned by the Beaver Line of Canada but subsequently acquired by the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was its second officer in May 1901, when it became the first merchant vessel to be equipped with wireless.”

— Erik Larson

333. “A woman who may report on a neighbor for disloyalty and jeopardize his life, even cause his death, takes her big kindly-looking dog in the Tiergarten for a walk. She talks to him and coddles him as she sits on a bench and he attends to the requirements of nature.”

— Erik Larson

334. “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

335. “Hitler’s cabinet enacted a new law, to take effect January 1, 1934, called the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, which authorized the sterilization of individuals suffering various physical and mental handicaps.”

— Erik Larson

336. “There were so many items on the menu that Cunard felt obliged to print a separate sheet with suggested combinations, lest one starve from befuddlement.”

— Erik Larson

337. “After noting that Germany’s submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: “For our part, we want the traffic – the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”

— Erik Larson

338. “Klemperer detected a certain “hysteria of language” in the new flood of decrees, alarms, and intimidation – “This perpetual threatening with the death penalty!” – and in strange, inexplicable episodes of paranoid excess, like the recent nationwide search. In all this Klemperer saw a deliberate effort to generate a kind of daily suspense, “copied from American cinema and thrillers,” that helped keep people in line. He also gauged it to be a manifestation of insecurity among those in power. In.”

— Erik Larson

339. “If some of what follows challenges what you have come to believe about Churchill and this era, may I just say that history is a lively abode, full of surprises.”

— Erik Larson

340. “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.” Fromm.”

— Erik Larson

341. “If someone asks me why we did not use the regular courts I would reply: at the moment I was responsible for the German nation; consequently.”

— Erik Larson

342. “My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim.”

— Erik Larson

343. “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

344. “Deploying flattery leavened with irony, he began:.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

346. “His demand for fine things, especially those rendered in gold, was fed as well by a kind of institutional larceny.”

— Erik Larson

347. “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

348. “Sentences wandered through the report like morning glory through the pickets of a fence.”

— Erik Larson

349. “After a few moment he reached for her wrist and felt her pulse fade to nothing, like the rumble of a receding train.”

— Erik Larson

350. “Churchill saw the relationship in succinct terms. “Some take drugs,” he said. “I take Max.”

— Erik Larson