“He did not like Europe, which he regarded as a lesser continent, populated with people significantly greedier and more materialistic than Americans. It was a place, he noted, where”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“They cut the menu from twenty-five items to nine, featuring hamburgers and cheeseburgers, and they made the burgers a little smaller—ten hamburgers from one pound of meat instead of eight.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“One reason that Americans as a people became nostalgic about the fifties more than twenty-five years later was not so much that life was better in the fifties (though in some ways it was), but because at the time it had been portrayed so idyllically on television.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“As he found beauty in the hamburger, he thought hot dogs unattractive—both aesthetically and commercially.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“Under enemy-alien status, as his biographer Robert Chadwell Williams has pointed out, he could not own a car or join a British Civil Defense team, but he could in time work on the most secret aspects of atomic physics.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“It requires a certain kind of mind to see the beauty in a hamburger bun.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“She hated that many of her colleagues hid behind the title “Planned Parenthood.” That was a euphemism. “It irks my very soul and all that is Irish in me to acquiesce to the appeasement group that is so prevalent in our beloved organization,” she wrote.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“Anybody is a damn fool if he actually seeks to be President,” he told friends. “You give up four of the very best years of your life. Lord knows it’s a sacrifice. Some people think there is a lot of power and glory attached to the job. On the contrary the very workings of a democratic system see to it that the job has very little power.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“Asked about the role of America’s newspaper publishers, later, when they opposed him editorially, he answered, “Their job is to separate the wheat from the chaff and then print the chaff.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“When his troops reached the rocket camp, they found almost everything of value gone and Stalin was reportedly furious. “This is absolutely intolerable,” he said, according to reliable defectors. “We defeated Nazi armies; we occupied Berlin and Peenemünde, but the Americans got the rocket engineers. What could be more revolting and more inexcusable? How and why was this allowed to happen?” In a way, the Red Army’s race toward Peenemünde was symbolic: It was, without anyone knowing it, the beginning of the race for outer space, or what Winston Churchill once called “the wizard war.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“To a Westerner the anomaly of this—a man under a life sentence for treason working in a prison on the most secret scientific developments—is almost too much to comprehend. In the Soviet Union it was an accepted practice. Korolev was immensely valuable, but because he was so valuable, he was also dangerous. He consented to work because this way, at least, he got some rations, he was with his colleagues, and he was doing what he loved most of all.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“One percent of the population ruled—and they were all grafters—while the other ninety-nine percent live under the worst kind of feudalism.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“Karl Marx, Amaya liked to say, was the last great philosopher of the coal age; his workers were locked into a serflike condition. Had Marx witnessed the industrial explosion of the Oil Century and the rising standard of living it produced among ordinary workers, he might have written differently.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“Advertising,” he wrote, “now compares with such long-standing institutions as the school and the church in the magnitude of its social influence. It dominates the media, it has vast power in the shaping of popular standards and it is really one of the very limited groups of institutions which exercise social control.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“(The Revsons apparently did not like a young psychologist named Joyce Brothers, who appeared as an expert on boxing. Thus the questions given her were exceptionally hard—they even asked her the names of referees—in the desire to get her off the show; their strategy had no effect: She became the second person to win $64,000.)”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“The problem with military policies that are built to domestic specifications and do not take into account the complexity of the real world is that eventually the real world intrudes.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“His body language was that of someone frozen and not yet thawed out.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“ingenue whose career was winding down”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
David Halberstam
Born place: in The United States
Born date April 10, 1934
See more on GoodReads
“It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any country. It is too tedious.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Innocents Abroad
“Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any subtlety of thought or expression. A man for his time, indeed.”
― Iain Pears, quote from The Dream of Scipio
“Odd Thing to Read After an Autopsy: “He was in much better health than we expected.” Well, yeah … except for the DEAD part.”
― Teresa Medeiros, quote from Goodnight Tweetheart
“At times I have discovered a new lowness of spirit, a new need to revolt, to kick against the constraints that a civilized life tries to impose.” He stopped and regarded her. “Because what is civilized life but an imposition of unreal standards upon flawed and defective human beings by other human beings no less flawed and defective?”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Angry Tide
“When, when will the state finally recognize that it has no higher duty than to safeguard the happiness of the millions of ordinary people? When finally will the state forget about the ideals that ignore the needs of simple everyday life? And when will it understand that a small step, however difficult it may be, taken in the direction of peace for the individual, as for nations, is greater than victory in battle?”
― quote from The White Rose
Ten Things We Did (a...
The River of Doubt:...
Death of Kings
Reconstructing Ameli...
The Crown of EmbersBookQuoters 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.
