"There was peace and the world had an even tenor to it's way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub it's eyes and awake but woke it with a start keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912." 
Jack B. Thayer, Titanic Survivor

"When anyone asks how I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog the like, but in all my experience, I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about. ...... I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. You see, I am not very good material for a story" 
Captain Smith, Commander of Titanic 

"I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern ship building has gone beyond that." 
Captain Smith, Commander of Titanic 

"We do not care anything for the heaviest storms in these big ships. It is fog that we fear. The big icebergs that drift into warmer water melt much more rapidly under water than on the surface, and sometimes a sharp, low reef extending two or three hundred feet beneath the sea is formed. If a vessel should run on one of these reefs half her bottom might be torn away." 
Captain Smith, Commander of Titanic 

"Many brave things were done that night but none more brave than by those few men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea...the music they played serving alike as their own immortal requiem and their right to be recorded on the rulls of undying fame."
Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor 

"To my poor fellow-sufferers: My heart overflows with grief for you all and is laden with sorrow that you are weighed down with this terrible burden that has been thrust upon us. May God be with us and comfort us all." 
Eleanor Smith, wife of the late Captain Smith 

"Deeply regret advise you TITANIC sank this morning after collision with iceberg, resulting in serious loss of life. Full particulars later." 
J. Bruce Ismay, Director of the White Star Line 

"Come at once, we have struck a berg, it's a CQD old man." 
Jack Phillips, Wireless Operator 

"I thought her unsinkable and I based my opinion on the best expert advice." 
Phillip Franklin, White Star Line Vice President 

"My friend Clinch Smith made the proposition that we should leave and go toward the stern. But there arose before us from the decks below a mass of humanity several lines deep converging on the Boat Deck facing us and completely blocking our passage to the stern. There were women in the crowd as well as men and these seemed to be steerage passengers who had just come up from the decks below. Even among these people there was no hysterical cry, no evidence of panic. Oh the agony of it."
Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic Survivor 

"The oarsman laid on their oars and all in the lifeboat were mointless as we watch Her in absolute silence. Save some who would not look and buried their heads on each other's shoulders." 
Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor 

"About this time people began jumping from the stern, my friend Milton Long and myself stood beside each other and jumped on the rail. We did not give each other any messages for back home cause neither thought we would ever get back." 
Jack B. Thayer, Titanic Survivor 

"Striking the water was like a thousand knives being driven into one's body. The temperature was 28 degrees, four degrees below freezing." 
Charles Lightoller, Second Officer aboard Titanic 

"The sounds of people drowning are something that I can not describe to you, and neither can anyone else. Its the most dreadful sound and there is a terrible silence that follows it." 
Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor 

"The partly filled lifeboat standing by about 100 yards away never came back. Why on Earth they never came back is a mystery. How could any human being fail to heed those cries." 
Jack B. Thayer, Titanic Survivor 

"I was only seven but I remember thinking that everything in the world was standing still." 
Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor

"Then creeping over the edge of the sea we saw a single light and presently a second below it. It seemed almost too good to be true and I think everyone's eyes were filled with tears, men's as well as women's. All around us we heard shouts and cheers." 
Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor 

"At 8:30 all the people were on board. I wanted to hold a service, a short prayer of thankfulness for those rescued and a short burial service for those who were lost. While they were holding the service I maneuvered around the scene of the wreckage. We saw nothing but one body." 
Captain Arthur H. Rostron, Commander of Carpathia 

"I still think about the 'might have beens' about the Titanic, that's what stirs me more then anything else. Things that happened that wouldn't have happened if only one thing had gone better for her. If only, so many if onlys. If only she had enough lifeboats. If only the watertight compartments had been higher. If only she had paid attention to the ice that night. If only the Californian did come. The 'if only' kept coming up again and again and that makes the ship more then the experience of studying a disaster. It becomes a haunting experience to me, it's the haunting experience of 'if only'." 
Walter Lord, Titanic historian and author 

"You weren’t there at my first meeting with Ismay. To see the little red marks all over the blueprints. First thing I thought was: ‘Now here’s a man who wants me to build him a ship that’s gonna be sunk.’ We’re sending gilded egg shells out to sea." 
Thomas Andrews, Managing Director of Harland and Wolff Shipyards 

"My mother had a premonition from the very word 'GO.' She knew there was something to be afraid of and the only thing that she felt strongly about was that to say a ship was unsinkable was flying in the face of God. Those were her words." 
Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor 

"When arranging a tour around the United States I had decided to cross on the Titanic. It was rather a novelty to be on the largest ship yet launched. It was no exaggeration to say that it was quite easy to lose one's way on such a ship." 
Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor 

"The history of the R.M.S. Titanic of the White Star Line, is one of the most tragically short it is possible to conceive. The world had waited expectantly for its launching and again for it's sailing; had read accounts of its tremendous size and its unexampled completeness and luxury; had felt it a matter of the greatest satisfaction that such a comfortable and above all such a safe boat had been designed and built- the "unsinkable lifeboat"- and then in a moment to hear that it had gone to the bottom as if it had been the veriest tramp steamer of a few hundred tons; and with it fifteen hundred passengers, some of them known all the world over! The improbability of such a thing ever happening was what staggered humanity." 
Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor 

"You could actually walk miles along the decks and passages covering different ground all the time. I was thoroughly familiar with pretty well every type of ship afloat but it took me 14 days before I could, with confidence, find my way from one part of that ship to another." 
Charles Lightoller, Second Officer aboard Titanic 

"I enjoyed myself as if I were on a summer palace by the seashore surrounded by every comfort. I was up early before breakfast and met the professional racquet player in a half hour's warming up prepority for a swim in the six foot deep tank of saltwater heated to a refreshing temperature." 
Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic Survivor

"Each night the sun sank right in our eyes along the sea, making an undulating glittering pathway, a golden track charted on the surface of the ocean which our ship followed unswervingly until the sun dipped below the edge of the horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster than we could steam and slipped over the edge of the skyline - as if the sun had been a golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too quickly for us to follow." 
Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor 

"What impressed me at the time that my eyes beheld the horrible scene was a thin light-gray smoky vapor that hung like a pall a few feet above the broad expanse of sea that was covered with a mass of tangled wreckage. That it was a tangible vapor, and not a product of my imagination, I feel well assured. It may have been caused by smoke or steam rising to the surface around the area where the ship had sunk. At any rate it produced a supernatural effect, and the pictures I had seen by Dante and the description I had read in my Virgil of the infernal regions of Charon, and the River Leth, were then uppermost in my thoughts. Add to this, within the area described, which was as far as my eyes could reach, there arose to the sky the most horrible sounds ever heard by mortal man except by those of us who survived this terrible tragedy. The agonizing cries of death from over a thousand throats, the wails and groans of the suffering, the shrieks of the terror-tricken and the awful gaspings for breath of those in the last throes of drowning, none of us will ever forget to our dying day." 
Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic Survivor 

"Just then the ship took a slight but definite plunge - probably a bulkhead went - and the sea came rolling along up in a wave, over the steel fronted bridge, along the deck below us, washing the people back in a dreadful huddled mass. Those that didn't disappear under the water right away, instinctively started to clamber up that part of the deck still out of water, and work their way towards the stern, which was rising steadily out of the water as the bow went down. It was a sight that doesn't bear dwelling on - to stand there, above the wheelhouse, and on our quarters, watching the frantic struggles to climb up the sloping deck, utterly unable to even hold out a helping hand." 
Charles Lightoller, Second Officer aboard Titanic 

"I know this isn’t scientific, but this ship’s warning me she’s gonna die and take a lot of people with her." 
Thomas Andrews, Managing Director of Harland and Wolff Shipyards 

"My mother had a premonition and she never went to bed in that ship at night at all. She sat up for three nights so she slept during the day and I was with my father. So my memories are of being with him and you know, father's spoiled little girl, and playing and being in a nursery and meeting a lot of other children and generally enjoying myself. But right inside still thinking of how odd it was that my mother was never up during the day." 
Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor 

Let the Truth be known, no ship is unsinkable. The bigger the ship, the easier it is to sink her. I learned long ago that if you design how a ship’ll sink, you can keep her afloat. I proposed all the watertight compartments and the double hull to slow these ships from sinking. In that way, you get everyone off. There’s time for help to arrive, and the ship’s less likely to break apart and kill someone while she’s going down." 
Thomas Andrews, Managing Director of Harland and Wolff Shipyards 

"Control your Irish passions, Thomas. Your uncle here tells me you proposed 64 lifeboats and he had to pull your arm to get you down to 32. Now, I will remind you just as I reminded him these are my ships. And, according to our contract, I have final say on the design. I’ll not have so many little boats, as you call them, cluttering up my decks and putting fear into my passengers." 
J. Bruce Ismay, Director of the White Star Line 

"The press is calling these ships unsinkable and Ismay’s leadin’ the chorus. It’s just not true." 
Thomas Andrews, Managing Director of Harland and Wolff Shipyards 

"And it wasn't until we were in the lifeboat and rowing away, it wasn't until then I realized that ship's going to sink. It hits me there." 
Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor 

'"I saw what looked like a number of long, black ribs, apparently floating nearly level with the surface of the water, parallel with each other I [and the side of the ship] but separated from each other by... two or three feet of water... the nearest one being probably twenty feet from the ship, and they extended from near the bow to about amidship. I saw no high iceberg at the time.'
Jack Thayer, Titanic passenger talking to his wife after the iceburg was struck

"There arose to the sky the most horrible sounds ever heard by mortal man...The agonizing cries of death from over a thousand throats, the wails and groans of the suffering, and the awful gaspings for breath of those in the last throes of drowning, none of us will ever forget to our dying day..." 
Colonel Archibald Gracie, survivor of the Titanic