Studs Terkel Quotes
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If we're to have a future in the 21st century, we'll want to be able to say, "Now what was the 20th century like in the United States of America, the most powerful of all countries of that century? What was it like to be an ordinary person?"
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Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
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On the evening bus, the tense, pinched faces of young file clerks and elderly secretaries tell us more than we care to know. On the expressways, middle management men pose without grace behind their wheels as they flee city and job.
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All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?
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I find labels "liberal" and "conservative" of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.
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I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.
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Unless there's a grassroots movement of some sort, with TV and the media in general in the hands of fewer and fewer people - the Murdochians, you know - all we hear is the one point of view. There has to be something communal.
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I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.
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Work is born in us. We take to it kindly or unkindly. The terms may be easy or harsh, but the contract is binding.
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I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
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People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel
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All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
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Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.
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Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it is my responsibility to make it better. Interweave all these communities and you really have an America that is back on its feet again. I really think we are gonna have to reassess what constitutes a 'hero'.
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If solace is any sort of succor to someone, that is sufficient. I believe in the faith of people, whatever faith they may have.
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Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.
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When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.
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I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.
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I was born in the year the Titanic sank. The Titanic went down, and I came up. That tells you a little about the fairness of life.
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That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting.
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People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being.
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Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
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My doctors were of one mind: unless something was immediately done, I had maybe six months to live. A quintuple bypass was suggested. Quintuple! I was impressed, though somewhat disturbed because I was in the middle of work on a new book.
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An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.