Best 8 quotes of Walter Lord on MyQuotes

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.

I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.

It's a funny thing, but today the Titanic is probably much more - that is people are much more aware of it than they were in 1954, when I was doing my research.

It would be nice to say the rich people, the fancy people, all behaved like bastards and the poor slobs all came through like heroes. But as a matter of fact, sometimes the poor slobs behave like slobs and the great, noble, privileged characters come off very well, indeed.

Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - not intellectual courage, but just plain physical courage.

There were exceptions, a couple of families that just plain didn't want to even think about it, although forty years had passed but mostly the people were very interested in talking about it.

What troubled people especially was not just the tragedy--or even the needlessness--but the element of fate in it all. If the Titanic had heeded any of the six ice messages on Sunday . . . if ice conditions had been normal . . . if the night had been rough or moonlit . . . if she had seen the berg 15 second sooner--or 15 seconds later . . . if she had hit the ice any other way . . . if her watertight bulkheads had been one deck higher . . . if she had carried enough boats . . . if the Californian had only come. Had any one of these "ifs" turned out right, every life might have been save. But they all went against her--a classic Greek tragedy.