Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “So every night,” he said, “I slept with a torpedo and a puppy.”

— Erik Larson

352. “Far from a clamor for war, there existed a widespread, if naive, belief that war of the kind that had convulsed Europe in past centuries had become obsolete – that the economies of nations were so closely connected with one another that even if a war were to begin, it would end quickly.”

— Erik Larson

353. “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

354. “Never before in civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon the city streets and to work under alien roofs.”

— Erik Larson

355. “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

356. “Burnham’s frequent admonition: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” Burnham.”

— Erik Larson

357. “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

358. “Clemmie dropped on him like a jaguar out of a tree.”

— Erik Larson

359. “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

360. “Stanley Baldwin, then deputy prime minister, gave the House of Commons a forecast of what was to come: “I think it is well for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.” 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

361. “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”

— Erik Larson

362. “In honor of the fair Kodak called the folding version of its popular model No. 4 box camera the Columbus. The photographs these new cameras created were fast becoming known as “snap-shots,” a term originally used by English hunters to describe a quick shot with a gun.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

364. “The frontier may indeed have closed at last, as Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed in his history-making speech at the fair, but for that moment it stood there glittering in the sun like the track of a spent tear.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

366. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

369. “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

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

— Erik Larson

371. “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

372. “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

373. “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

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

— Erik Larson

375. “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

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

— Erik Larson

377. “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

378. “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

379. “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

380. “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

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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

386. “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

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

— Erik Larson

388. “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

389. “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

390. “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

391. “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

392. “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

393. “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

394. “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

395. “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

396. “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

397. “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

398. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson