Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Flanagan and Allen: Bang, bang, bang, bang goes the farmer’s gun, Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run, run.”

— Erik Larson

352. “Speed Bonnie Boat.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

354. “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

355. “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

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

— Erik Larson

357. “THE SUBMARINE as a weapon had come a long way by this time, certainly to the point where it killed its own crews only rarely.”

— Erik Larson

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

361. “Such peaceful intervals never lasted long.”

— Erik Larson

362. “He slashed her throat in a Van Gogh stroke that nearly removed her head from her spine.”

— Erik Larson

363. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

366. “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

367. “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

368. “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

369. “It is,” she wrote, “an unfortunate trait in the human character to assail or asperse others engaged in the performance of humanitarian acts.”

— Erik Larson

370. “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

371. “The fair alone consumed three times as much electricity as the entire city of Chicago.”

— Erik Larson

372. “Hardly anyone thought that the threats against the Jews were meant seriously,” wrote Carl Zuckmayer, a Jewish writer. “Even many Jews considered the savage anti-Semitic rantings of the Nazis merely a propaganda device, a line the Nazis would drop as soon as they won governmental power and were entrusted with public responsibilities.” Although.”

— Erik Larson

373. “The story, too, tends to illustrate the end of the century.”

— Erik Larson

374. “She was one of America’s few female architects of stature, designer of a revered house in Farmington, which she named Hill-Stead.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

376. “Later, a passenger reported seeing a woman giving birth in the water. The idea that this might have been his mother would haunt the boy for the rest of his life.”

— Erik Larson

377. “I didn’t believe all her stories,” Martha wrote later. “I thought she was exaggerating and a bit hysterical.” When Martha left her hotel she witnessed no violence, saw no one cowering in fear, felt no oppression.”

— Erik Larson

378. “He often carried a revolver – and often misplaced it, according to Inspector Thompson. From time to time, Thompson recalled, Churchill would abruptly brandish his revolver and, “roguishly and with delight,” exclaim: “You see, Thompson, they will never take me alive! I will get one or two before they can shoot me down.”

— Erik Larson

379. “You don’t pay much attention to the construction of ships?” “No, as long as they float; if they sink, I get out.”

— Erik Larson

380. “After a few minutes, Churchill broke the silence, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” The remark had such power that Ismay quoted it to his wife after returning home. He had no idea that Churchill would soon deploy the line in one of his most famous speeches.”

— Erik Larson

381. “You know my dislike for saying ‘good-bye’ and were prepared to find that I had skipped this morning. To say that i was sorry to leave you all is to put it only one half as strongly as I feel.”

— Erik Larson

382. “Depending on one’s point of view, Germany was experiencing a great revival or a savage darkening.”

— Erik Larson

383. “One cannot possibly get accurate bombing on a selected target in this way.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

385. “French editor Octave Uzanne called it “that Gordian city, so excessive, so satanic.”27 Paul Lindau, an author and publisher, described it as “a gigantic peepshow of utter horror, but extraordinarily to the point.”28.”

— Erik Larson

386. “He told Hitler, “There is evident injustice in the French attitude; but defeat in war is always followed by injustice.” He raised the example of the aftermath of the American Civil War and the North’s “terrible” treatment of the South.”

— Erik Larson

387. “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

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

— Erik Larson

389. “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

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

— Erik Larson

391. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

394. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

397. “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

398. “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

399. “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

400. “The official burdens on your shoulders are indeed heavy. I write to tell you how deeply I sympathize with you in having to bear this new burden of personal loss and sorrow.”

— Erik Larson