Quotes from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Timothy Egan ·  312 pages

Rating: (37.4K votes)


“Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized," Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was "sinister", a symptom of "our stupendous ignorance.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“Much of Texas took its prohibition seriously. Not Dalhart. It took its whiskey seriously, in part because some of the finest corn liquor in America was coming out of the High Plains.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“So cotton growers, siphoning from the Ogallala, get three billion dollars a year in taxpayer money for fiber that is shipped to China, where it is used to make cheap clothing sold back to American chain retail stores like Wal-Mart.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“Rioting over food: how could this be? Here was all this grain, food enough to feed half the world, sitting in piles at the train station, going to waste. Something was out of balance.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“At the wedding, women served a dish of cabbage that had been shredded by wooden kraut cutters, mixed with ground pork and onion, wrapped in bread dough, and baked.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl



“Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized,” Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was “sinister,” a symptom of “our stupendous ignorance.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized,”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“The villainous sun and the starved bank did not seem related—yet.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“The name Oklahoma is a combination of two Choctaw words— okla, which means "people,”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


“Going to the outhouse was an ordeal, a wade through shoulder-high drifts, forced to dig to make forward progress.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl



“Of all the countries in the world, we Americans have been the greatest destroyers of land of any race of people barbaric or civilized," Bennett said in a speech at the start of the dust storms. What was happening, he said, was "sinister," a symptom of "our stupendous ignorance.”
― Timothy Egan, quote from The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl


About the author

Timothy Egan
Born place: in Seattle, Washington, The United States
Born date November 8, 1954
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