Top 50 Nathaniel Philbrick Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “In all natural disasters through time, man needs to attach meaning to tragedy, no matter how random and inexplicable the event is.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

2. “It has been estimated that at least a thousand Indians were sold into slavery during King Philip’s War, with over half the slaves coming from Plymouth Colony alone. By the end of the war, Mount Hope, once the crowded Native heart of the colony, was virtually empty of inhabitants. Fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower, the Pilgrims’ children had not only defeated the Pokanokets in a devastating war, they had taken conscious, methodical measures to purge the land of its people.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

3. “The moment any of them gave up on the difficult work of living with their neighbors – and all of the compromise, frustration, and delay that inevitably entailed – they risked losing everything.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

4. “The act of self-expression – through writing a journal or letters – often enables a survivor to distance himself from his fears.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

5. “People think I live here on Nantucket and just gaze at the ocean, getting my inspiration. Not so. I work in my basement and gaze out onto a single window that shows me a cement wall. This is a profession, and it’s important to have professionalism about the writing.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

6. “This mortal life decays apace How soon the bubble’s broke Adam and all his numerous race Are Vanity and Smoke.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

7. “Thomas Paine was so inspired by the heroism displayed at Fort Mifflin that he published an open letter to William Howe: ‘You are fighting for what you can never obtain and we are defending what we never mean to part with.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

8. “Chase’s ability to adjust his manner of leadership to the needs of his men begs comparison to one of the greatest and most revered leaders of all time, Sir Ernest Shackleton.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

9. “The sperm whales’ network of female-based family unit resembled, to a remarkable extent, the community the whalemen had left back home on Nantucket. In both societies the males were itinerants. In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

10. “No longer mindful of the debt they owed the Pokanokets, without whom their parents would never have endured their first year in America, some of the Pilgrims’ children were less willing to treat Native leaders with the tolerance and respect their parents had once afforded Massasoit.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

11. “Philip’s local squabble with Plymouth Colony had mutated into a regionwide war that, on a percentage basis, had done nearly as much as the plagues of 1616–19 to decimate New England’s Native population.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

12. “I follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a Terrible Towel.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

13. “Without Massasoit’s help, the Pilgrims would never have survived the first year, and they remained steadfast supporters of the sachem to the very end. For his part, Massasoit realized almost from the start that his own fortunes were linked to those of the English.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

14. “During the forty-five months of World War II, the United States lost just under 1 percent of its adult male population; during the Civil War the casualty rate was somewhere between 4 and 5 percent; during the fourteen months of King Philip’s War, Plymouth Colony lost close to 8 percent of its men.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

15. “They were a most unusual group of colonists. Instead of noblemen, craftsmen, and servants – the types of people who had founded Jamestown in Virginia – these were, for the most part, families – men, women, and children who were willing to endure almost anything if it meant they could worship as they pleased.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

16. “In a letter hastily written to a friend in London, Cushman saw only doom and disaster ahead. “Friend, if ever we make a plantation God works a miracle, especially considering how scant we shall be of victuals, and most of all un-united amongst ourselves and devoid of good tutors and regiment. Violence will break all. Where is the meek and humble spirit of Moses?”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

17. “Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

18. “Part of what makes a revolution such a fascinating subject to study is the arrival of the moment when neutrality is no longer an option. Like it or not, a person has to choose.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

19. “In 1836, the Lydia, a Nantucket whaleship, was struck and sunk by a sperm whale, as was the Two Generals a few years later.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

20. “When a group of frontiersmen camped on the middle fork of Elkhorn Creek heard about the militiamen’s deaths in Massachusetts, they decided to name their outpost for the historic event. That is why what was then a part of Virginia is known today as Lexington, Kentucky.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

21. “You cannot underestimate the influence of Shakespeare.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

22. “For all they had suffered during those first terrible winters in America, their best years were behind them, in Leiden. Never again would they know the same rapturous sense of divine fellowship that had first launched them on this quest.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

23. “Brown made a claim that possibly hit a little too close to home. ‘Money is this man’s god,’ the handbill read, ’and to get enough of it, he would sacrifice his country.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

24. “The future is never more important than to a people on the verge of a cataclysm.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

25. “It is painful to witness the death of the smallest of God’s created beings, much more, one in which life is so vigorously maintained as the Whale! And when I saw this, the largest and most terrible of all created animals bleeding, quivering, dying a victim to the cunning of man, my feelings were indeed peculiar!”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

26. “How much of assumed national and personal character comes from the fact that we have never truly known need to the point of having our character tested? Willing conscientious objectors underwent controlled starvation and confirmed how quickly it impacts the initiative and generosity we like to think of as “American” characteristics.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

27. “It may have been true that from a strictly legal standpoint there was nothing wrong with how Winslow and the other Plymouth officials acquired large amounts of Pokanoket land. And yet, from a practical and moral standpoint, the process removed the Indians from their territory as effectively – and as cheaply – as driving them off at gunpoint.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

28. “This meant that while the vast majority of the country’s citizens stayed at home, the War for Independence was being waged, in large part, by newly arrived immigrants.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

29. “By doing their best to destroy the Native people who had welcomed and sustained their forefathers, New Englanders had destroyed their forefathers’ way of life.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

30. “The whaleman’s rule of thumb was that, before diving, a whale blew once for each minute it would spend underwater. Whalemen also knew that while underwater the whale continued at the same speed and in the same direction as it had been traveling before the dive. Thus, an experienced whaleman could calculate with remarkable precision where a submerged whale was likely to reappear.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

31. “Soon after, Tom, all of twenty years old, became the only soldier in the Civil War to win two Medals of Honor. In.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

32. “Stephen Hopkins was making his second trip to America. Eleven years earlier in 1609 he had sailed on the Sea Venture for Virginia, only to become shipwrecked in Bermudaan incident that became the basis for Shakespeare’s The Tempest.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

33. “To my mind, an adventure is something a person willingly undertakes.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

34. “Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social” – as opposed to “authoritarian” – form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

35. “A total of about 200,000 Americans had served in the war, but that did not mean the rest of the country of about 3 million would show them any gratitude or respect. Americans in 1783 were desperate to put the trauma of the Revolution behind them, and these broken and penniless soldiers were a daily reminder of what they preferred to forget. “What scornful looks and hard words have I experienced,” Martin wrote forty-seven years later. “I hope I shall one day find land enough to lay my bones.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

36. “In a letter to Benjamin Franklin he described how the explosion of the Augusta created a cloud like none other he had ever seen: “a thick smoke rising like a pillar and spreading from the top like a tree.” It did not become the symbol of a new and terrible age of destruction for another 168 years, but in the fall of 1777 the skyline of Philadelphia was darkened by the shadow of the mushroom cloud.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

37. “After seventeen days, one of the crew suggested that they cast lots. As it turned out, the lot fell to the man who had originally made the proposal, and after lots were cast again to see who should execute him, he was killed and eaten.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

38. “Atrocities were expected in both European and Native conflicts. And yet, the English had to admit that compared to what was typical of European wars, the Indians had conducted themselves with surprising restraint.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

39. “This is also the story of two British generals. The first, Thomas Gage, was saddled with the impossible task of implementing his government’s unnecessarily punitive response to the Boston Tea Party in December 1773.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

40. “Without the discovery of Arnold’s treason in the fall of 1780, the american people might never have been forced to realize that the real threat to their liberties came not from without but from within.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

41. “Something like going to get the newspaper can increase your writing efficiency by taking you away from the material. When I’m doing other things, writing stuff will be swirling around in my head, and sometimes I’ll see a new way into the material.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

42. “Some Englishmen privately admitted that if the Narragansetts had chosen to join Philip in July, all would have been lost. As the Nipmucks assailed them from the west, the far more powerful Narragansetts might have stormed up from the south, and Boston would have been overrun by a massive pan-Indian army. But instead of acknowledging the debt they owed the Narragansetts, the Puritans resolved to wipe them out.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

43. “In 1634, smallpox and influenza ravaged both the Indians and the English in the region. William Brewster, whose family had managed to survive the first terrible winter unscathed, lost two daughters, Fear and Patience, now married to Isaac Allerton and Thomas Prence, respectively.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

44. “Hindsight has a way of corrupting people’s memories, inviting them to view a past event not as it actually occurred but as they wished it had occurred given the ultimate result.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

45. “You know, if you’re at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

46. “That Church according to Church is too brave, too cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point. America was destined to become a nation of self-fashioned and self-promoting men. What makes his story so special, I believe, is that he shows us how the nightmare of wilderness warfare might one day give rise to a society that promises liberty and justice for all.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

47. “In the years after the War of Independence, historian paid scant attention to the Siege of Fort Mifflin, primarily because, Martin believed ‘there was no Washington, Putnam, or Wayne there.’ ‘Had there been,’ he conjecture, ‘the affair would have been extolled to the skies.’ As Martin and the five hundred defenders of Fort Mifflin had learned first-hard, ’great men get great priase, little men nothing.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

48. “They were too focused on their own inner lives to appreciate the subtleties of character that might have alerted them to the true motives of those who did not share in their beliefs. Time and time again during their preparations to sail for America, the Pilgrims demonstrated an extraordinary talent for getting duped.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

49. “By the 1770s, the Teton Sioux had overrun the Arikara, or Ree, on the Missouri River and made it as far west as the Black Hills, where they quickly ousted the Kiowa and the Crows. Over the next hundred years the Sioux continued to expand their territory, eventually forcing the Crows to retreat all the way to the Bighorn River more than two hundred miles to the west, while also carrying on raids to the north and south against the Assiniboine, Shoshone, Pawnee, Gros Ventre, and Omaha.”

— Nathaniel Philbrick

50. “Since republics rely on the inherent virtue of the people, they are exceedingly fragile. All it takes is one well-placed person to destroy everything. Washington, his face betraying the sadness, anger, and shock of this most recent revelation, turned to Lafayette and asked, “Whom can we trust now?”

— Nathaniel Philbrick