1930s Quotes

• Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Brother, War, Should Have

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• In the 1930s one was aware of two great evils - mass unemployment and the threat of war.

  James Meade

  War, Two, Evil

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• Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives”, p.57, Princeton University Press

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• [He] may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot.

  Groucho Marx

  Funny, Witty, Crazy

  "Fictional character: Rufus T. Firefly". "Duck Soup", www.imdb.com. 1933.

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• The designers [of the 1930s] were populists, you see; they were trying to give the public what it wanted. What the public wanted was the future.

  William Gibson

  Giving, Trying, Architecture

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• People in millenniums ahead will know what we were like in the 1930's and the thing that, the important major things that shaped our history at that time. This is as important for historic reasons as any other.

  Gordon Parks

  People, Important, Historic

  38 Copy quote

• The Depression, which started in 1929 was rather mild from 1929 to 1930. And, indeed, in my opinion would have been over in 1931 at the latest had it not been that the Federal Reserve followed a policy which led to bank failures, widespread bank failures, and led to a reduction in the quantity of money.

  Milton Friedman

  Opinion, Reduction, Federal Reserve

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The Queen Mary was the most civilized and luxurious way one could travel to America in the late 1930s.

  Maureen O'Hara

  Travel, Queens, America

  Maureen O'Hara, John Nicoletti (2005). “'Tis Herself: An Autobiography”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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• You know, if you look back in the 1930s, the money went to infrastructure. The bridges, the municipal buildings, the roads, those were all built with stimulus money spent on infrastructure. This stimulus bill has fundamentally gone, started out with a $500 rebate check, remember. That went to buy flat-screen TVs made in China.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Bridges, Looks, Gone

  "Meet The Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. August 1, 2010.

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• I think I would like to have lived in the 1930s and worn beautiful bias cut dresses all the time.

  Nanette Lepore

  Beautiful, Cutting, Thinking

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• What a different world it was when I first sailed for Europe in 1930, with my mother, sister, and brother to spend six months abroad.

  Gene Tierney

  Mother, Brother, Europe

  Gene Tierney, Mickey Herskowitz (1979). “Self-portrait”, Peter Wyden

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• I remember the people I knew in prison; I was very fortunate to know them - they came from 1910, 1920, 1930.

  Gregory Corso

  People, Remember, Prison

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• I went to Princeton in the fall of 1930 as a half-time instructor.

  Stephen Cole Kleene

  Fall, Half Time, Princeton

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• I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.

  August Wilson

  Character, Play, Piano

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• When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or '31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their owners, since they had lost their jobs and couldn't keep up the payments.

  Tom Glazer

  Jobs, Night, Philadelphia

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• The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.

  Tony Blair

  Memories, War, Europe

  Tony Blair (2004). “Tony Blair in His Own Words”, Politicos Pub

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• Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

  Clark Gable

  Movie, Badass, Wind

  "Fictional character: Rhett Butler". "Gone with the Wind", 1939.

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• For example, when my father was able to buy a secondhand car in the late 1930s, and he took us to the countryside for a weekend, if we looked for a motel to stay in we had to see if it said "restricted" on it. "Restricted" meant no Jews.

  Noam Chomsky

  Father, Weekend, Car

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• The Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it - the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Faith, Men, Thinking

  "The Ascent of Man" (Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"), 1973.

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• My parents were children during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it scarred them. Especially my father, who saw destitution in his Brooklyn, New York neighborhood; adults standing in so called 'bread lines,' children begging in the streets.

  Bill O'Reilly

  New York, Children, Father

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• Importantly, in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, despite its mandate, was quite passive and, as a result, financial crisis became very severe, lasted essentially from 1929 to 1933.

  Ben Bernanke

  Financial, Great Depression, Results

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• The majority of American states had laws by the 1930s that allowed for forced sterilization of socially undesirable categories of people, so-called feeble-minded, for example, and with Hitler culminating in genocide.

  Michael Sandel

  Law, People, Majority

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In 1930 I became a member of the Reichstag.

  Hans Frank

  Members

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• The securities laws of the 1930s were so important because it forced companies to file registration statements and issue prospectuses, and it remedied the imbalance of information.

  Ron Chernow

  Law, Tyrants, Issues

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• In my father's time - he was in college during many transitions in the late 1930s - they had great institutional loyalties... to his college, eventually the navy, the Democratic Party and certain ideals of our country. Those are the things that became broken with my generation.

  Whit Stillman

  Loyalty, Country, Father

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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