Studs Terkel Quotes
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Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?
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When I was asked: "Will shame do it?" Meaning: Will welfare people be shamed into getting respectable work? And I said that shame plays the biggest role there is: The biggest shame is that there is so much abundance around but that so many have so little and so few have so much. That's the shame.
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I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.
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I'm called an oral historian, which is something of a joke. Oral history was here long before the pen, long before Gutenberg and the printing press. The difference is I have a tape recorder in my hand.
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I am paraphrasing Einstein. I love to do that: nobody dares contradict me.
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Reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation.
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'Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph.
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You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.
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The trouble with censorship is that once it starts it is hard to stop. Just about every book contains something that someone objects to.
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I want a language that speaks the truth.
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The issue is jobs. You can't get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket and feeling like somebody.
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Never go to bed with someone whose problems are greater than yours.
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There are nascent stirrings in the neighborhood and in the field, articulated by non-celebrated people who bespeak the dreams of their fellows. It may be catching. Unfortunately, it is not covered on the six o'clock news.
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One night a guy hit his head on a welding gun. He went to his knees. He was bleeding like a pig, blood was oozing out. So I stopped the line for a second and ran over to help him. The foreman turned the line on again, he almost stepped on the guy. That's the first thing they always do. They didn't even call an ambulance. The guy walked to the medic department -- that's about half a mile -- he had about five stitches put in his head. The foreman didn't say anything. He just turned the line on. You're nothing to any of them.
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With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.
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When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
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Think of what's stored in an 80- or a 90-year-old mind. Just marvel at it. You've got to get out this information, this knowledge, because you've got something to pass on. There'll be nobody like you ever again. Make the most of every molecule you've got as long as you've got a second to go.
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What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling . . . In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.
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If there is knowledge, it lies in the fusion of the book and the street.
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My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.
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Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far.
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We hear the term independent contractors in Iraq. Independent contractors? Mercenaries!
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I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.
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At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day - indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue - the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours.