The Great Depression Quotes

“And she apologized. For herself and for her father. For her brothers and her mother. For Strawberry and Mississippi, and by the time I finished jerking at her head, I think she would have apologized for the world being round had I demanded it.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

“New Dealers always seemed to be comparing actual capitalism with ideal government. They judged capitalism by its apparent effects and government by its announced intentions”
― Jim Powell, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

“Although the United States, with its unit banking laws, had thousands of bank failures, Canada, which permitted branch banking, didn't have a single failure during the Great Depression.”
― Jim Powell, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

“David Lawrence, founder of US News & World Report, warned, "Confiscation of wealth may satisfy the vengeful in us. It may sooth a retaliatory spirit. But it is the path of national suicide...There must always be the reward motive. To many people it is but another way to set goals of human ambition...When government kills the opportunity to earn, it sounds the death knell of the opportunity to serve.”
― Jim Powell, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

“Nobody can go back to how it was. The dust bowl dried us all up bitter as seeds and spat us out all over the land and none of us yet has taken root.”
― Katherine Longshore, A Tyranny of Petticoats

“I can't speak. There are too many negatives. Too many questions...And all the things these hard times have taken from me. All the things I've had to give up.

Except, perhaps, my dreams.”
― Katherine Longshore, A Tyranny of Petticoats

“In Woolrich's crime fiction there is a gradual development from pulp to noir. The earlier a story, the more likely it stresses pulp elements: one-dimensional macho protagonists, preposterous methods of murder, hordes of cardboard gangsters, dialogue full of whiny insults, blistering fast action. But even in some of his earliest crime stories one finds aspects of noir, and over time the stream works itself pure.

In mature Woolrich the world is an incomprehensible place where beams happen to fall, and are predestined to fall, and are toppled over by malevolent powers; a world ruled by chance, fate and God the malign thug. But the everyday life he portrays is just as terrifying and treacherous. The dominant economic reality is the Depression, which for Woolrich usually means a frightened little guy in a rundown apartment with a hungry wife and children, no money, no job, and desperation eating him like a cancer. The dominant political reality is a police force made up of a few decent cops and a horde of sociopaths licensed to torture and kill, whose outrages are casually accepted by all concerned, not least by the victims. The prevailing emotional states are loneliness and fear. Events take place in darkness, menace breathes out of every corner of the night, the bleak cityscape comes alive on the page and in our hearts.

("Introduction")”
― Francis M. Nevins, Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich

“one summer hornets made a nest deep in the garage and my aunt said we’d have to empty the whole thing in order to find where they were coming from
my grandfather refused
and I don’t think I need to say too much in order for you to understand that he wasn’t willing to empty the container of his body either
he would rather let a threat linger between tightly packed muscles if it meant he never had to pull the pain out
stack it in the driveway
let the neighbors and god catch a glimpse
or, sweet baby Jesus, ever send someone in to smoke out the harm”
― Stephanie Greene

“This slice of life happened during the depression era, late 1920’s and early 1930’s in Hoboken, NJ. Will such hard times happen again as the “Rich get richer and the poor get poorer?”
“Fischer & Koenig’s factory building had been built in a wedge of filled-in land between the cliff side road of the palisades and the railroad tracks. Although some unwieldy power tools had already been invented, and were in use since the end of the nineteenth century, they were seldom used at home or in small factories such as the one where my father worked. As in most shops of that era, everything was custom-made. My father did almost everything by hand, including the staining, polishing and finishing work of furniture, tabletops and caskets. It was an era when things were still done the old-fashioned way. With jobs scarce and difficult to find, he worked long hours in the cold building with nothing more than an open steel drum outside the door, in which scrap wood was burned so that the workers could occasionally warm their hands. Under these horrid conditions, it didn’t take long for his nose to run, his hands to become raw and cracked, and his lips to become chapped. It seemed that he constantly had a cold and problems with his feet. Studying the faces of people back then, you could see the intense hardship in their weathered faces.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One"

“Politicians continued their mantra, saying that Americans were much too smart to be fooled! As a nation we believed this nonsense. However, as a people, we had no idea what was happening and, even worse, we didn’t know to what extent the depression would affect us. The major problem was that the wealth of the nation was spread unevenly, with the rich getting richer and the poor being abused. A vast difference developed between the country’s productive capacity and the ability of the people to purchase manufactured products. In other words, the consumer base had been eroded to the point where Americans could no longer afford to buy the necessities of life, thus ending the need to manufacture things. As factories closed and people were laid off, the downhill spiral became complete. Everybody was left wondering what had happened to the country that had promised them an opportunity to have a better life than their parents had had. The 1930’s became the most difficult years that the United States had ever had to face economically, and the people we had entrusted with political power and our welfare, caved in to special interest groups.
Rudy Vallée typified the era as he sang songs such as Brother, Can You Spare a Dime and Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries, through his handheld megaphone. The dances of the day were the Charleston and the Peabody and, if you believed the film industry, everyone was doing them. Hollywood provided a fleeting escape from reality. That is, if you could afford the price of admission to the theaters that had just opened in almost every hamlet in the country.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One"

“I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.

Henry David Thoreau”
― Gayla McBride Edwards, Frankie, Nancy and Rose on the Mountain

“Her father looked to the distance, out across the pond. “Sometimes I just get tired of bowin’ down and givin’ up, you know?”
It was Dr. Hawkins who nodded in agreement. He placed a hand on Papa’s broad shoulder, but then he added, “You know, Jonah, sometimes it’s best to wait till times get better.”
― Sharon M. Draper, Stella by Starlight

“The same wind that blowed so hard the sun came up late and Sunday didn’t get here until late Tuesday evening?” Pastor Patton joined in.
“That’s musta been why I missed church last week,” Mr. Winston said.
“You missed church because you went fishing!” Pastor Patton retorted.
Mr. Winston turned to Spoon Man. “Save me, Spoon Man,” he pleaded. “Tell us a story before the pastor sends me to damnation for a fishin’ trip!”
― Sharon M. Draper, Stella by Starlight

“Well, what about that storm that blew the crooked road straight?”
“The same wind that blowed so hard the sun came up late and Sunday didn’t get here until late Tuesday evening?” Pastor Patton joined in.
“That’s musta been why I missed church last week,” Mr. Winston said.
“You missed church because you went fishing!” Pastor Patton retorted.
Mr. Winston turned to Spoon Man. “Save me, Spoon Man,” he pleaded. “Tell us a story before the pastor sends me to damnation for a fishin’ trip!”
― Sharon M. Draper