1929 Quotes

“We all love a good story, a concise explanation of how the world works. We all love an easy buck. Temptation has driven human folly for centuries, whether the serpent in the Garden of Eden or the market manias of cryptocurrency or artificial intelligence. Each wave seduces us into thinking that we’ve learned from history and, this time, we can’t be fooled. Then it happens again. This is how it happened in 1929.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit by the experiences of others. Being both a father and teacher, I know we can teach our children nothing…Each must learn its lesson anew. —Albert Einstein, October 26, 1929”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The almost singular through line behind every major financial crisis is one thing: debt.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Q: Is not commercial credit based primarily on money or property? A: No”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The past five years of an almost constantly rising stock market had made the life of a short seller like Livermore feel almost impossible—”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“There were plenty of opportunities to arrest the forces of speculation before they got out of hand. The long answer is that it would have taken almost divine prescience to look beyond the short-term incentives for making money and focus instead on the long-term consequences.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Forbes approvingly quoted Mitchell’s theory of how to live well. “A man can get a temporary thrill from making money but if all he has to show for his life’s work is a financial balance he cannot derive a great deal of satisfaction. A man must be able to say ‘My work has been of such a character that I have benefited my fellowmen.’ Unless he can do that”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation

“The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit by the experiences of others. Being both a father and teacher, I know we can teach our children nothing…Each must learn its lesson anew.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Bank Charles Edwin”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The Dow Jones closed 1929 at 248, down just 17 percent for the year. Bankers and traders could look at that number and reasonably say to themselves, “Not so terrible. We’ve seen worse.” And, in fact, many of them had seen worse, and not so very long ago. In 1921, the Dow Jones ended the year down almost 33 percent, and everyone remembered what happened next. Stocks went on a tear, up 12 percent the following year, then 21 percent the year after that. Panics and crashes were a natural occurrence.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“in a memo to his counterpart at J.P. Morgan in Paris, captured the prevailing mood on Wall Street: You will be wondering about causes but I doubt if anyone will ever disclose a specific thing that produced the debacle. It seemed to me that the time came when a sufficient number of people believed the hour to sell had come. Their action started a wave of fear and everybody tried to sell at once. The mere machinery of the exchange and of the brokerage houses could not stand the strain and that added to the panic that ensued. The air is full of all kinds of stories as to the origin of the panic but as far as I know none of them are true. The air is also full of hard luck stories and estimates of the effect of the panic upon general business.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“should move from a six-day to a five-day workweek. It would not only give Americans a well-deserved break from the daily grind, it would promote a new kind of economic development. “It is only a few years since the general Saturday half holiday was an innovation, stoutly resisted in many quarters,” he wrote in the North American Review. “The mileage travelled by automobiles on American roads any fair Sunday must pretty nearly equal the mileage covered on the other six days of the week. What would happen if to a full Sunday holiday we add a full Saturday holiday? There will be an immediate and tremendous increase in the use, which is to say in the consumption, of automobiles, tires, gasoline, oil and roads.” He added: “With two full play days ahead of them people will start out Friday evening or Saturday morning on longer trips…More hotels and tourist camps will be called for…People moreover will need extra suits and dresses, camping equipment, fishing tackle, sports goods.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“That’s what debt does. It draws the wealth of tomorrow into the present. Problems arise when we get greedy and take too much. Nobody knows for sure”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“In 1920, H. G. Wells, the futurist, already anxious about the direction of the modern world, wrote: “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Automobile production, often used as a measure of consumer purchasing power, was greater than any other similar period. Industrial employment was larger than in the same period of last year, while industrial payroll totals showed considerable expansion.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“After a brief swoon in mid-February, the Dow had jumped 8 percent to 319.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“And if the characters”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Just a week after Roosevelt was elected”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“the prosecution of an outstanding violation of the banking law would be the most salutary action that could be taken at this time. The feeling is that if the people become convinced that the big violators are to be punished it will be helpful in restoring confidence shaken by the Senate committee revelations.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“He was particularly enthused—even a bit bemused—by the positive reception he was getting from Wall Street, which he knew was skeptical of his view that the national economy ought to be managed rather than simply left to its own devices. “Wall Street’s Hoover Boom is starting,” wrote the syndicated columnist Arthur Brisbane on the eve of Hoover’s swearing-in. “Heaven pity the poor bear, if any bear still survives.” After a brief swoon in mid-February, the Dow had jumped 8 percent to 319.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The journalistic tone of the decade was set by the upstart Time”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Churchill did not consider this one man’s distress emblematic of the moment. What impressed Churchill during his trip was a quality of resilience”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Reflecting later on the moment”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“No matter how many warnings are issued or how many laws are written”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The almost singular through line behind every major financial crisis is one thing: debt. It’s a powerfully optimistic force. If we envision the future as a land of ever-expanding opportunity and affluence”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Norbeck refused to give up. “People have no faith in the Government,” he wrote”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Lengthy”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“Stocks were no different than a vacuum cleaner or a dishwasher. They were all products that improved your life.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation

“They will dress up hope as certainty. And in that collective fever”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation