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1930s Quotes

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1930s Quotes

“The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.”

PovertyDespairEnglandHopelessness1930sSlumsSocial ClassPlumbingTrains
Book:The Road to Wigan Pier
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“When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi hakenkreuz, but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this 'signature' to be removed from all his future editions. Having initially sympathized with some of the early European fascist movements, he wanted to express his repudiation of Hitlerism (or 'the Hun,' as he would perhaps have preferred to say), and wanted no part in tainting the ancient Indian rune by association. In its origin it is a Hindu and Jainas symbol for light, and well worth rescuing.”

SchoolEuropeEnglandSymbolsHinduismFascismWorld War Ii1930sNazisAdolf Hitler1945Rudyard KiplingSwastikasFascism In Europe
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“Men in offices are, for the most part, Deadly Bores. They suffer from indigestion and ask you to buy their pills in your lunch hour. They seldom think of their girl employees as human beings at all. What they would prefer, if they were procurable and didn’t cost too much, would be a series of automatic machines, into which you put the week’s salary and took out the letters at the other end. They would prefer these to young women, because you can kick a machine, if you happen to be put out about something, without being hauled into court for assault.”

MenHumorSexismWorkplace1930sWomen WritersOffice Politics
Book:Three-a-Penny
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“Of her portrayal in the 1967 movie, Bonnie and Clyde, Blanche said, 'That movie made me out like a screaming horse's ass!' ... 'I was too busy moving bodies [to act hysterical],' Blanche herself said. ... Her image in this memoir, as well as in Fugitives and in Cumie Barrow's manuscript, was fashioned at a time when Blanche could have easily been charged with the Joplin murders. That may account for the great difference in tone Between Blanche, the young convict in Missouri State Penitentiary, and Blanche, the elder ex-fugitive. Indeed, at least one of Blanche Barrows' champions, Wilbur Winkler, the Deni— son man who co-owned (along with Artie Barrow Winkler) the Cinderella Beauty Shoppe, used Fugitives to try to obtain a parole for Blanche from the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole. In letters to the Platte County prosecutor and the judge involved in Blanche's case, Winkler alluded to the book's description of Blanche in Joplin in an effort to win their support for her release: 'Blanch [sic] ran hysterical [tic] thru [sit] the gunfire down the street carrying [her] dog in her arms,' Winkler wrote. He even sent copies of the book to them—and to others.”

CriminalsMovie1930sBreaking The LawOutlawsBonnie And ClydeOutlaw Heroes
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
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“A Jewish woman in exile in the 1930s is an antihero.”

PastHumanityPoliticsSocialWomenHistorySocietyFeminismHistoricalJewFeministWomanWomen EmpowermentWomens RightsNaziWomanhoodWomen S RightsExileWomen S FictionNazism1930sWomen S InspirationalWoman QuotesWomen QuotesWomen S StrengthJewishNazi GermanyJewsWomen And MenNazisWoman S StrengthWomen WritersWoman QuotationsWoman S CharacterHistory Repeating ItselfHistory Of The United StatesAntiheroJewish IdentityHistory Of ReligionWoman S SecretsExilioWoman To WomanHistorical PerspectiveWomanismFeminist MemoirAntiheroesExiledWoman S CharmAntiheroineExilesJewish Diaspora1930Jewish Question1930 SNazi German 1945Antiheros
Author:Núria Añó
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“– All strong independent farmers are driven into unbearable conditions. Sooner or later, following the Party’s orders, they will come and eliminate us as a class — within an hour.”

PeasantsUkraine1930sClass StrugglePolitical ViolenceCollectivizationUssr HistoryRepressionsHistorical TraumaState Terror
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.
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“That’s how we’ve ended up,” Ivan said with a bitter smile. “We work, as in the proverb: Enough trading, father — there’s no change left to give. ‘Why did they suddenly increase the grain procurement plan?’ Vasyl protested. ‘Everything seems the same — but it isn’t,’ Danylo explained. ‘The status of our land has changed, and so has the status of the collective farmers. What grew last year is now taxed differently. Even the poor peasants who joined the collective are no longer considered poor — and the taxes rise accordingly.’ ‘Clever,’ Ivan muttered angrily. ‘They’ve laid out their accounting traps well.’ — Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Two Context note: In Soviet collective farms, taxes and grain quotas were often increased not because of real agricultural growth, but due to bureaucratic reclassification. Accounting became a tool of pressure that made normal farming impossible.”

InjusticeBureaucracyFarmingPeasantsUkraine1930sSoviet HistoryCollectivizationState TerrorFarming Economy
Book:Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга друга. Непрості дороги до пекла: Виживання в умовах насильства.
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“Almost immediately after jazz musicians arrived in Paris, they began to gather in two of the city’s most important creative neighborhoods: Montmartre and Montparnasse, respectively the Right and Left Bank haunts of artists, intellectuals, poets, and musicians since the late nineteenth century. Performing in these high-profile and popular entertainment districts could give an advantage to jazz musicians because Parisians and tourists already knew to go there when they wanted to spend a night out on the town. As hubs of artistic imagination and experimentation, Montmartre and Montparnasse therefore attracted the kinds of audiences that might appreciate the new and thrilling sounds of jazz. For many listeners, these locations leant the music something of their own exciting aura, and the early success of jazz in Paris probably had at least as much to do with musicians playing there as did other factors. In spite of their similarities, however, by the 1920s these neighborhoods were on two very different paths, each representing competing visions of what France could become after the war. And the reactions to jazz in each place became important markers of the difference between the two areas and visions. Montmartre was legendary as the late-nineteenth-century capital of “bohemian Paris,” where French artists had gathered and cabaret songs had filled the air. In its heyday, Montmartre was one of the centers of popular entertainment, and its artists prided themselves on flying in the face of respectable middle-class values. But by the 1920s, Montmartre represented an established artistic tradition, not the challenge to bourgeois life that it had been at the fin de siècle. Entertainment culture was rapidly changing both in substance and style in the postwar era, and a desire for new sounds, including foreign music and exotic art, was quickly replacing the love for the cabarets’ French chansons. Jazz was not entirely to blame for such changes, of course. Commercial pressures, especially the rapidly growing tourist trade, eroded the popularity of old Montmartre cabarets, which were not always able to compete with the newer music halls and dance halls. Yet jazz bore much of the criticism from those who saw the changes in Montmartre as the death of French popular entertainment. Montparnasse, on the other hand, was the face of a modern Paris. It was the international crossroads where an ever changing mixture of people celebrated, rather than lamented, cosmopolitanism and exoticism in all its forms, especially in jazz bands. These different attitudes within the entertainment districts and their institutions reflected the impact of the broader trends at work in Paris—the influx of foreign populations, for example, or the advent of cars and electricity on city streets as indicators of modern technology—and the possible consequences for French culture. Jazz was at the confluence of these trends, and it became a convenient symbol for the struggle they represented.”

JazzFranceParisFrench1930s1920sBohemiaInterwar Years
Book:Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris
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“It was the influence of the Great Depression, recycling, thriftiness, stocking up to the point of hoarding for fear of being without. ... She [Rhea Leen] remembered coming home from school before Jean [Billie Jean Parker] got off work to a cold, empty house, and finding only one can of soup in the cupboard, heating the soup and eating only half of it, saving the rest for he aunt. Rather remembered ... when her father took a job as a janitor because his savings had been wiped out in the crash of 1929 and there were no other jobs. He always distrusted banks thereafter, refusing to do business with them, preferring to bury his money in the yard. He was not alone.”

Great Depression1930sHoardingThriftinessFinancial Crash
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
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“Heartless gossips pose as professional press, they get a few quotes and run with the story like Seabiscuit to the finish line. They’re nothing more than conmen, salesmen, pitchmen, pompous men professing to be of public service—and they have the freedom to do so. There’s no price to pay.”

TruthJournalism1930sTabloidsJournalistsGossip Columns
Book:Lady Be Good: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale
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“The world was a miserable, wretched place to be in the 1930’s. It was a time when death lurked around every street corner — death which could be as slow as starvation or as quick as a whistling machinegun bullet. . . . [It was a time when] everyone and everything — including immediate future — was in doubt. . . . While a handful of men were getting rich . . . the average citizen was being whittled shorter and shorter with every skimpy meal.”

Great Depression1930sBonnie And Clyde
Author:Billie Jean Parker Moon
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“The world was a miserable, wretched place to be in the 1930’s. It was a time when death lurked around every street corner — death which could be as slow as starvation or as quick as a whistling machinegun bullet. . . . [It was a time when] everyone and everything — including immediate future — was in doubt. . . . While a handful of men were getting rich . . . the average citizen was being whittled shorter and shorter with every skimpy meal.' — Billie Jean Parker Moon, 1975”

Great Depression1930sBonnie And Clyde
Book:Bonnie & Clyde and Me!: The Floyd Hamilton Story, Public Enemy #1, 1938...in His Own Words!
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“The world was a miserable, wretched place to be in the 1930’s. It was a time when death lurked around every street corner — death which could be as slow as starvation or as quick as a whistling machinegun bullet. . . . [It was a time when] everyone and everything — including immediate future — was in doubt. . . . While a handful of men were getting rich . . . the average citizen was being whittled shorter and shorter with every skimpy meal.' — Billie Jean Parker Moon (Bonnie Parker's sister), 1975”

Great Depression1930sBonnie And Clyde
Book:Bonnie and Clyde and Me
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“There were occasional dances at the main prison compound with live bands as well as holiday dinners, activities that Blanche greatly enjoyed. In her scrapbooks, she placed an autographed promotional photograph of one visiting band, The Rural Ramblers. ... Blanche loved to dance and by all accounts she was very good at it. She applied to a correspondence course in dancing that came complete with diagrams of select dance steps to place on the floor and practice. She also cut similar dance instructions and diagrams from newspapers and magazines and put them in her scrapbooks. By 1937, she had mastered popular dances like jitterbug, rumba, samba, and tango. The men’s prison, or “the big prison” as the women called it, hosted movies on Friday nights. Features like Roll Along Cowboy ... were standard, usually accompanied by some short musical feature such as Who’s Who and a newsreel. The admission was five cents. Blanche attended many of these movies. She loved movies all of her life. Blanche Barrow’s periodic visits to the main prison allowed her to fraternize with males. She apparently had a brief encounter with “the boy in the warden’s office” in the fall of 1934. There are few details, but their relationship was evidently ended abruptly by prison officials in December. There were other suitors, some from Blanche Barrow’s past, and some late arrivals...”

PrisonPrisonerGreat Depression1930sPrison LifeWomen S Prison
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
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“[At Eastham, probably after sexual abuse]: In Barrow's own words to Fults, 'I'd like to shoot all these damned guards and turn everybody loose.' Fults, initially unimpressed by the diminutive Barrow, later noted the change he witnessed. 'I seen him change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake. He got real bitter.' ... This is echoed by members of the Barrow family who noted a distinct difference in Barrow's personality after his 1932 parole. According to his sister Marie, 'Something awful sure must have happened to him in prison, because he wasn't the same person when he got out.”

PrisonPrisonerGreat Depression1930sPrisonersPrison BreakSexual Abuse SurvivorBonnie And Clyde
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
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“In addition, of course, they would be taken to a bath and in the bath vestibule they would be ordered to leave their leather coats, their Romanov sheepskin coats, their woolen sweaters, their suits of fine wool, their felt cloaks, their leather boots, their felt boots (for, after all, these were no illiterate peasants this time, but the Party elite—editors of newspapers, directors of trusts and factories, responsible officials in the provincial Party committees, professors of political economy, and, by the beginning of the thirties, all of them understood what good merchandise was). "And who is going to guard them?" the newcomers asked skeptically. "Oh, come on now, who needs your things?" The bath personnel acted offended. "Go on in and don't worry." And they did go in. And the exit was through a different door, and after passing through it, they received back cotton breeches, field shirts, camp quilted jackets without pockets, and pigskin shoes. (Oh, this was no small thing! This was farewell to your former life—to your titles, your positions, and your arrogance!) "Where are our things?" they cried. "Your things you left at home!" some chief or other bellowed at them. "In camp nothing belongs to you. Here in camp, we have communism! Forward march, leader!" And if it was "communism," then what was there for them to object to? That is what they had dedicated their lives to.”

1930sStalinismIntelligentsia1973PurgesThe Slave Caravans
Book:The Gulag Archipelago
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“Actually, despite his earlier vow to one day raid Eastham, Clyde Barrow tried to go straight when he was paroled. He first helped his father make preparations to put an addition onto the service station, then traveled to Framingham, Massachusetts, to take a job and get away from his past in Texas. However, he quickly grew homesick and returned to Dallas to work for United Glass and Mirror, one of his former employers. It was then that local authorities began picking Barrow up almost daily, often taking him away from his job. There was a standing policy at the time to basically harass excons. Barrow was never charged with anything, but he soon lost his job. He told his mother, in the presence of Blanche Barrow and Ralph Fults, 'Mama, I'm never gonna work again. And I'll never stand arrest, either. I'm not ever going back to that Eastham hell hole. I'll die first! I swear it, they're gonna have to kill me.' ... Mrs. J. W. Hays, wife of former Dallas County Sheriff's Deputy John W. “Preacher” Hays, said, 'if the Dallas police had left that boy [Clyde Barrow] alone, we wouldn't be talking about him today.”

1930sPolice HarassmentOutlawsBonnie And ClydeOutlaw HeroesEx ConHarrasment
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
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“1) Work on one thing at a time until finished. 2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring." 3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. 4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time! 5) When you can't create you can work. 6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers. 7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it. 8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only. 9) Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude. 10) Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. 11) Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.”

WritingRules1930sAnais Nin
Author:Henry Miller
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“In the 1930s, Reich began to measure these energetic shifts in therapy. He noticed that real arousal causes the skin’s electrical charge to rise, especially in the sensitive areas of the body.”

BodyTherapySensitive1930sMeasureReichElectrical ChargesEnergetic Shifts
Book:Crossing the Forbidden Highway: The Untold Story of Orgone, Body Therapy, and Suppressed Emotion
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“I talk of those incidents [with Bonnie and Clyde] as if I were not a part of any of it, like a character in a book I once read. It’s the only way I keep from going crazy. Maybe we were all pretty young then, but we knew what we were doing. Clyde never held a gun to my head. I was there because I wanted to be! What’s that they say in the movies? ‘The show must go on!’ Well, life goes on.”

Criminals1930sCoping MechanismOutlawsBonnie And ClydeOn The RunLiving With Yourself
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
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“Sandrine opened her eyes to the soft gray light of early dawn. Recollections of sensual pleasure seemed to caress her body, bringing a smile to her lips. She lay back in the pillow and listened to the breathing of Philippe beside her. She lingered in the memory of the previous night, a memory that was like a warm and tender embrace, an evening of small intimate harmonies. As it should be.”

FranceParis1930sLeft Bank
Book:Paris 1934: Victory in Retreat
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“The anarchist is dressed all in black. In the dark you can only see his eyes. It dates from the 1930's. Porky Pig is a little boy. The children told me that he has a nephew now, Cicero. Do you remember, during the war, when Porky worked in a defense plant? He and Bugs Bunny. That was a good one too.”

ChildrenLittlesWarEyeRememberBlackDarkBoysPlantDefenseHis EyesPigsBugsAnarchistLittle Boys1930sBunniesNephew
Book:The Crying of Lot 49
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“There are three great international team sports in Australia: cricket, rugby (two codes), and Pom-bashing. But the greatest of these is the last, and it is time we prepared ourselves for the greatest celebration of Pom-bashing since Bodyline, the 1930s cricket tour that became an international incident. That one rankles to this day and is otherwise known as the longest whinge in sporting history.”

TwoLastsThreeSportsKnownTeamPreparedInternationalCodeAustraliaThis DayCelebrationCricketIncidentsRugby1930sSports Team
Author:Simon Barnes
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