Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “It could be done, because it had to be done.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

303. “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

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

— Erik Larson

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

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

— Erik Larson

309. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

312. “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

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

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

— Erik Larson

317. “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

318. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

321. “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

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

— Erik Larson

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

329. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

334. “Flanagan and Allen: Bang, bang, bang, bang goes the farmer’s gun, Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run, run.”

— Erik Larson

335. “Speed Bonnie Boat.”

— Erik Larson

336. “I don’t see how in the course of having to make endless decisions one can avoid some mistakes.”

— Erik Larson

337. “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

338. “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

339. “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

340. “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

341. “He recognized that the systemic malaise that caused it was a consequence in part of his own refusal over the years to limit his courtship of the finest wines, foods, and cigars.”

— Erik Larson

342. “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

343. “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

344. “Outside the sky was blank, the light pewter.”

— Erik Larson

345. “Unhappily, it depends upon the attitude of a single submarine commander whether America will or will not declare war.”

— Erik Larson

346. “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

347. “Three hours into the voyage Kendall saw two of his passengers lingering by a lifeboat. He knew them to be the Robinsons, father and son, returning to America.”

— Erik Larson

348. “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

349. “Despite the blackout, theaters were full, there were plenty of nightclubs for late dancing after restaurants closed, and many people still gave dinner parties, often organized round a son on leave.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson