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

  102 Copy quote

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

  James Meade

  War, Two, Evil

  63 Copy quote

• 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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• 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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• [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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• 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

  37 Copy quote

• 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

  22 Copy quote

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

  Clark Gable

  Movie, Badass, Wind

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

  161 Copy quote

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• In 1930 I became a member of the Reichstag.

  Hans Frank

  Members

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  29 Copy quote

• The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

  Paddy Ashdown

  Way, Return, Comeback

  "Farewell, Sarajevo" by Ed Vulliamy, www.theguardian.com. November 1, 2005.

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• The Chicago Economics Department was in intellectual ferment, although the central issues of the 1930s were very different from those in later times. I had never before encountered minds of that quality at close quarters and they influenced me strongly.

  George Stigler

  Issues, Intellectual, Mind

  27 Copy quote

• I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Done, Taught, Professors

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• My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

  Colin Firth

  Grandmother, Common, Ministers

  26 Copy quote

• When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

  Irwin Shaw

  Hair, Stories, Magazines

  23 Copy quote

• In the early 1930s, flying from England to Australia was the longest flight in the world. It was considered extremely dangerous and hazardous, pushing pilots to the limits of mechanical skills and human endurance. Aviation was young.

  Mary Garden

  Skills, Australia, Flying

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• My mother had been educated at a convent, and she had been converted to communism by my father during Stalin's most rampant period, at the beginning of the 1930s. So she had two gods, God in heaven and god on earth.

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Mother, Father, Two

  27 Copy quote

• Then I was president of the Bakelite Corporation from 1910 to 1930

  Leo Baekeland

  President, Corporations

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• My father died in 1930, but if you told him or anybody almost in that time that you'd be able to sit back in England and watch a cricket game in Australia, they'd have you put in the loony bin.

  Desmond Llewelyn

  Father, Games, Australia

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• In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

  P. D. James

  People, Secret, Today

  FaceBook post by P.D. James from Sep 07, 2011

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• I graduated in 1930 and I went up to the Yale Drama School for two years.

  Albert Maltz

  Drama, School, Yale

  27 Copy quote