“Overriding everything else, the Titanic also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“The night was a magnificent confirmation of "women and children first," yet somehow the loss rate was higher for Third Class children than First Class men.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the "unsinkable ship" -- perhaps man's greatest engineering achievement -- going down the first time it sailed.
But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth mean so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“The clock in the wireless shack said 12:45 A.M. when the Titanic sent the first SOS call in history.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“This was the era when gentlemen formally offered their services to "unprotected ladies" at the start of an Atlantic voyage.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“Before the Titanic, all was quiet. Afterward all was tumult. That is why, to anybody who lived at the time, the Titanic more than any other single event marks the end of the old days, and the beginning of a new, uneasy era.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic. This is the story of her last night.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“Suddenly he was amazed to see a lifeboat floating near the starboard side. He phoned the bridge—did they know there was a boat afloat? An incredulous voice asked who he was. Rowe explained, and the bridge then realized he had been overlooked. They told him to come to the bridge right away and bring some rockets with him.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“Try and get off with Major Butt”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“Mrs. George Widener was met not by automobile but by a special train—consisting of a private Pullman, another car for ballast, and a locomotive.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“It is a rash man indeed who would set himself up as final arbiter on all that happened the incredible night the Titanic went down.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“If wealth meant so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“Possession of the ice didn’t remain a Third Class monopoly for long.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“But legends are part of great events, and if they help keep alive the memory of gallant self-sacrifice, they serve their purpose.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
“Seen and unseen, the great and the unknown tumbled together in a writhing heap as the bow plunged deeper and the stern rose higher.”
― Walter Lord, quote from A Night to Remember
Walter Lord
Born place: in Baltimore, Maryland, The United States
Born date October 8, 1917
See more on GoodReads
“While these tactics were aggressive and crude, they confirmed that our legislation had touched a nerve. I wasn’t the only one who recognized this. Many other victims of human rights abuses in Russia saw the same thing. After the bill was introduced they came to Washington or wrote letters to the Magnitsky Act’s cosponsors with the same basic message: “You have found the Achilles’ heel of the Putin regime.” Then, one by one, they would ask, “Can you add the people who killed my brother to the Magnitsky Act?” “Can you add the people who tortured my mother?” “How about the people who kidnapped my husband?” And on and on. The senators quickly realized that they’d stumbled onto something much bigger than one horrific case. They had inadvertently discovered a new method for fighting human rights abuses in authoritarian regimes in the twenty-first century: targeted visa sanctions and asset freezes. After a dozen or so of these visits and letters, Senator Cardin and his cosponsors conferred and decided to expand the law, adding sixty-five words to the Magnitsky Act. Those new words said that in addition to sanctioning Sergei’s tormentors, the Magnitsky Act would sanction all other gross human rights abusers in Russia. With those extra sixty-five words, my personal fight for justice had become everyone’s fight. The revised bill was officially introduced on May 19, 2011, less than a month after we posted the Olga Stepanova YouTube video. Following its introduction, a small army of Russian activists descended on Capitol Hill, pushing for the bill’s passage. They pressed every senator who would talk to them to sign on. There was Garry Kasparov, the famous chess grand master and human rights activist; there was Alexei Navalny, the most popular Russian opposition leader; and there was Evgenia Chirikova, a well-known Russian environmental activist. I didn’t have to recruit any of these people. They just showed up by themselves. This uncoordinated initiative worked beautifully. The number of Senate cosponsors grew quickly, with three or four new senators signing on every month. It was an easy sell. There wasn’t a pro-Russian-torture-and-murder lobby in Washington to oppose it. No senator, whether the most liberal Democrat or the most conservative Republican, would lose a single vote for banning Russian torturers and murderers from coming to America. The Magnitsky Act was gathering so much momentum that it appeared it might be unstoppable. From the day that Kyle Scott at the State Department stonewalled me, I knew that the administration was dead set against this, but now they were in a tough spot. If they openly opposed the law, it would look as if they were siding with the Russians. However, if they publicly supported it, it would threaten Obama’s “reset” with Russia. They needed to come up with some other solution. On July 20, 2011, the State Department showed its cards. They sent a memo to the Senate entitled “Administration Comments on S.1039 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law.” Though not meant to be made public, within a day it was leaked.”
― Bill Browder, quote from Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
“It will not be easy for him to see her dead, should they become close. But she has so few friends. She cannot turn one away.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from Three Dark Crowns
“I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.”
― quote from Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE
“She felt it when she woke, not a presence but an absence.”
― Paula Hawkins, quote from Into the Water
“In the end, it is always the ruling classes, bourgeois certainly, but above all aristocratic, that long mourn the empires, and their grief always has a stagey quality to it.”
― Benedict Anderson, quote from Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
Backroads to Far Tow...
The Piano Man's Daug...
Bend Sinister
The Killing Game
Autobiography of a F...
Acacia: The War with...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
