Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “It was magnificent and terrible: the spasmodic drone of enemy aircraft overhead; the thunder of gunfire, sometimes close sometimes in the distance; the illumination, like that of electric trains in peace-time, as the guns fired; and the myriad stars, real and artificial, in the firmament. Never was there such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness.”

— Erik Larson

352. “Dodd’s main reason for wanting to see Dieckhoff was to express his dismay at having been made to seem naive by Goebbels’s Jews-as-syphilis speech after all he had done to quiet Jewish protests in America.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

357. “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

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

— Erik Larson

359. “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

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

— Erik Larson

361. “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

362. “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

363. “Nor could one have imagined that such a terroristic performance as that of June 30 would have been permitted in modern times.” Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger. Even the army had stood by, despite the murder of two of its generals.”

— Erik Larson

364. “Mayor Harrison warned that the ranks of the unemployed had swollen to an alarming degree. “If Congress does not give us money we will have riots that will shake this country,” he said. Two weeks later workers scuffled with police outside City Hall. It was a minor confrontation, but the Tribune called it a riot.”

— Erik Larson

365. “It was one thing to read newspaper stories about Hitler’s erratic behavior and his government’s brutality toward Jews, communists, and other opponents, for throughout America there was a widely held belief that such reports must be exaggerated, that surely no modern state could behave in such a manner.”

— Erik Larson

366. “Lost children filled every chair at the headquarters of the Columbian Guard; nineteen spent the night and were claimed by their parents the next day.”

— Erik Larson

367. “In his dispatches Messersmith reprised one theme again and again: how impossible it was for casual visitors to understand what was really happening in this new Germany. “The Americans coming to Germany will find themselves surrounded by influences of the Government and their time so taken up by pleasant entertainment, that they will have little opportunity to learn what the real situation is.”

— Erik Larson

368. “Even the language used by Hitler and party officials was weirdly inverted. The term “fanatical” became a positive trait. Suddenly.”

— Erik Larson

369. “All the ship had to do was make another turn, away from U-20, and the chase would be over.”

— Erik Larson

370. “Slowly the energy left her, and her hands began to move in slow arcs, soothing and sensuous, the wild drums silent. Ballet now, a pastoral exit.”

— Erik Larson

371. “Dodd could not grasp how these things could be occurring in the Germany he had known and loved as a young scholar in Leipzig.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

373. “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

374. “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

375. “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

376. “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

377. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

380. “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

381. “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

382. “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

383. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

386. “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

387. “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

388. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

391. “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

392. “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

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

— Erik Larson

394. “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

395. “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

396. “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

397. “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

398. “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

399. “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

400. “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