Top 500 Erik Larson Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

406. “Speed Bonnie Boat.”

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

408. “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

409. “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

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

— Erik Larson

411. “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

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

418. “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

419. “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

420. “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

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

— Erik Larson

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

425. “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

426. “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

427. “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

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

432. “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

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

— Erik Larson

434. “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

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

— Erik Larson

436. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

439. “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

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

— Erik Larson

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

— Erik Larson

442. “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

443. “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

444. “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

445. “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

446. “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

447. “Not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.” That word: television. In 1900.”

— Erik Larson

448. “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

449. “All he asked of life was the best of everything.”

— Erik Larson

450. “Even the language used by Hitler and party officials was weirdly inverted. The term “fanatical” became a positive trait. Suddenly it connoted what philologist Victor Klemperer, a Jewish resident of Dresden, described as a “happy mix of courage and fervent devotion.”

— Erik Larson