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 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

“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

“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 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

“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

“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 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. 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

“a collective delusion. Optimism becomes a drug, or a religion, or some combination of both. Propelled along by a culture of hot tips, one-of-a-kind deals, killer sales pitches, and irresistible slogans, people lose their ability to calculate risk and distinguish between good ideas and bad ones.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The issue that had in fact decided the race between Hoover and Roosevelt”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The private banker is a member of a profession which has been practiced since the Middle Ages. In the process of time there has grown up a code of professional ethics and customs”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“the market never stands still. It acts like the ocean. There are waves of accumulation and distribution. The market always tells you when you are wrong. So let’s leave it to the market to tell its own story—”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“That the country’s banking system is tossing about today without its helm being under the control of its pilots gives cause for deep concern,” Warburg said.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“But by encouraging speculation and promising outsized returns to a new class of investors who had never before participated in markets they barely understood”
― 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

“Every stock is like a human being: it has a personality”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“One thing that Pecora had mastered during his years in the courtroom was a knack for seizing on certain details that made his targets look utterly guilty and disreputable”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“The worst thing Roosevelt could do as an incoming president inheriting a catastrophic economy was to sully himself with the old administration’s failures. Roosevelt needed a clean slate.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

“One of his biggest ideas was to break up the commercial lending side of banks from the investment banking side—the part of the bank that dealt with the stock market and underwritings and mergers. That way the stock traders and speculators wouldn’t endanger the bank accounts of ordinary Americans who kept their money in commercial banks.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation