Top 300 Ken Follett Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Until August the Luftwaffe had raided only ports and airfields. Fitz had explained, in an unusually candid moment, that the British were not so scrupulous: the government had approved bombing of targets in German cities back in May, and all through June and July the RAF had dropped bombs on women and children in their homes. The German public had been enraged by this and demanded retaliation. The Blitz was the result.”

— Ken Follett

202. “You mean there isn’t an indisputable book that is the actual Word of God? Men argue about it and make a judgment?”

— Ken Follett

203. “He did not share his father’s belief that the Germans were a superior type of human, but on the other hand he could see that German mastery of Europe would be no bad thing. The French had many brilliant talents – cooking, painting, fashion, wine – but they were not good at government. French officials saw themselves as some kind of aristocracy, and thought it was perfectly all right to.”

— Ken Follett

204. “Barrow, who evidently had never seen an atlas, felt superior to Descartes, Rembrandt, and Beethoven.”

— Ken Follett

205. “As in every country, Walter thought gloomily, army officers were pressing their political masters to take the first steps to war. It.”

— Ken Follett

206. “One of the hardest things for me, now that I’m famous, is finding people who can read my stuff and give me an honest critique.”

— Ken Follett

207. “After a certain point, most people, including editors, will tell you everything you do is great.”

— Ken Follett

208. “Lowther looked shocked. “That would mean it’s our policy to kill civilians.” “Exactly.” “But the government assures us – ” “The government lies,” Boy said. “And the bomber crews know it. Many of them don’t give a damn, of course, but some feel bad. They believe that if we’re doing the right thing, then we should say so, and if we’re doing the wrong thing we should stop.”

— Ken Follett

209. “He put on his coat and hat. Then he returned to the kitchen. He kissed his mother and embraced his father. “What’s this for?” said his father. “You’re only going to work.” “It’s just in case we never meet again,” Volodya said. Then he went out.”

— Ken Follett

210. “Growing up is learning to deceive.”

— Ken Follett

211. “A white American can orbit the earth, but a black American can’t enter a restroom.”

— Ken Follett

212. “Everything is ultimately the Prime Minister’s fault’, said Lloyd. ‘That’s what it means to be the leader.”

— Ken Follett

213. “America is ruled by laws, not mobs!”

— Ken Follett

214. “Los manifestantes pueden causar un gran impacto, pero al final son los gobiernos los que remodelan el mundo.”

— Ken Follett

215. “For me the words should be like a pane of glass that you look through, not at.”

— Ken Follett

216. “Jesus is always with you, even down the pit.” At the time he had thought she was just telling him to behave well. But she had been wiser than that. Of course Jesus was with him. Jesus was everywhere. The darkness did not matter, nor the passage of time.”

— Ken Follett

217. “But when you grab happiness you may let go of something more valuable – your integrity. – Hugh Pilaster.”

— Ken Follett

218. “An evident principle runs through the whole program,” Wilson had said. “It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.” Tears had come to Gus’s eyes when he had read these words. “The people of the United States could act upon no other principle,” Wilson had said.”

— Ken Follett

219. “When Ethel said we should give everyone free education and free health care and unemployment insurance, I told her she was living in a dream world. But now look: everything she campaigned for has come to pass, and yet England is still England.”

— Ken Follett

220. “I wanted to be some kind of captain of industry. Then I wanted to be in advertising, and then I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.”

— Ken Follett

221. “Sometimes Winston imagined he had devised a policy when all he had done was coin a phrase.”

— Ken Follett

222. “They had just started their first scheduled air service. Planes went from Vienna to Kiev and back like railway trains. There would be a network of flights all over Europe after Germany won the war. And Walter and Maud would raise their children in a peaceful and well-ordered world.”

— Ken Follett

223. “What about America? They believe in democracy. Surely they’ll sell guns to Spain?” “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there’s a well-financed Catholic lobby, led by a millionaire called Joseph Kennedy, opposing any help to the Spanish government. And a Democratic president needs Catholic support. Roosevelt won’t do anything to jeopardize his New Deal.”

— Ken Follett

224. “Carla had never before realized how much she had been protected by politicians, newspapermen, and lawyers. Without them, she saw now, the government could do anything it liked, even kill people.”

— Ken Follett

225. “For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.”

— Ken Follett

226. “A woman’s life was a house of closed doors: she could not be an apprentice, she could not study at the university, she could not be a priest or a physician, or shoot a bow or fight with a sword, and she could not marry without submitting herself to the tyranny of her husband.”

— Ken Follett

227. “The truth is not arrived at by majority vote.”

— Ken Follett

228. “After all, if you can’t kill a man in front of God’s face you probably shouldn’t kill him at all.”

— Ken Follett

229. “You can’t write novels about people who are timid, risk-averse and passive. Or you can, but they’re called literary novels.”

— Ken Follett

230. “A very good editor is almost a collaborator.”

— Ken Follett

231. “The fourth issue would go to the printer tomorrow. He was not so happy with this one: there was no big controversy. He put that out of his mind for the moment and.”

— Ken Follett

232. “It did not occur to them that a woman could be dangerous. How foolish they were.”

— Ken Follett

233. “There had been a wonderful atmosphere of liberation and camaraderie. The Russians hated it.”

— Ken Follett

234. “Repress those who complain, rather than address their discontents.”

— Ken Follett

235. “Any man who needs to surround himself with loyal acolytes doesn’t really believe in.”

— Ken Follett

236. “With faultless good manners they would lead the world to destruction.”

— Ken Follett

237. “Lenin’s idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.”

— Ken Follett

238. “No candidate is perfect’ said Lloyd. ‘It’s how you deal with your weaknesses that matters.”

— Ken Follett

239. “She nodded. “They’re counting again in California. Almost a million people voted, and the difference is about five thousand.” “So much hangs on the decisions of a small number of poorly educated people.” “That’s democracy.” Gus smiled. “A terrible way to run a country, but every other system is worse.”

— Ken Follett

240. “Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees, Walter thought apocalyptically. Perhaps that would be for the best.”

— Ken Follett

241. “All the same he was depressed and bitter. Life never dealt him a winning hand.”

— Ken Follett

242. “Monks committed all the same sins that ordinary people did. He had just been shocked by the woman’s shamelessness. The sight of her nakedness remained with him, the way the hot heart of a candle flame, stared at for a few moments, would burn on behind closed eyelids.”

— Ken Follett

243. “It was unladylike even to know the name of your lawyer, let alone to understand your rights under the law. No wonder women were mercilessly exploited.”

— Ken Follett

244. “Men often told a fairy tale in which there was a division of labor in families, the man going out to earn money, the woman looking after home and children. Reality was different.”

— Ken Follett

245. “People change’. Weak women change to please men, Lili thought.”

— Ken Follett

246. “Most of my stories have some basis in fact.”

— Ken Follett

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

247. “It’s our responsibility to make politics less rough – more honest, more rational, less violent. If we do not do that, we fail in our patriotic duty.”

— Ken Follett

248. “It was amazing, Philip thought, how a clear case of injustice could come to seem evenly balanced when argued at the court.”

— Ken Follett

249. “Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.”

— Ken Follett

250. “Meanwhile the subject peoples of the Austrian Empire were starting to think they might rule themselves – which was why the Bosnian nationalist Gavrilo Princip had shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.”

— Ken Follett