The Great Depression Quotes

“Come to think of it, Idgie and Ruth bought the café in 1929, right in the height of the Depression…but at the café, those Depression years come back to me now as the happy times, even though we were all struggling. We were happy and didn’t know it.”

“The woman said…‘I know you don’t understand what it means, but there’s a depression going on all over this country. People can’t find jobs and these are very, very difficult times for everybody. We’ve been lucky enough to find two wonderful families who’ve opened their doors for you.‘”

“And perhaps that was the worst of it. Whether you were a banker or a baker, a homemaker or homeless, it was with you night and day - a terrible, unrelenting uncertainty about the future, a feeling that the ground could drop out from under you for good at any moment.”

“Ulbrickson knew full well that money more or less grew on the trees at Yale, and that funds had been vastly easier to come by in 1928, before the Depression, than in 1936.”

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse is not a true story. While it is a novel, however, and while its plot and characters are fictional, its portrayal of life during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s is historically accurate

“Col, in 1938, has the experience of seeing a neighbor getting evicted during the Great Depression. Bridie, in 1928 and with much excitement, sees the arrival of electricity in her house.”