Studs Terkel Quotes
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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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I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.
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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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All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
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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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Don't be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.
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You know, 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein said everything had changed since the atom was split, except the way we think. We have to think anew.
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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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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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Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
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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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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 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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People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being.
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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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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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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 hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.
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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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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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I have a big mouth, and I never met a petition I didn't like, so of course in the McCarthy days I got in trouble.
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It is still the arena of those who dream of the City of Man and those who envision a City of Things. The battle appears to be forever joined. The armies, ignorant and enlightened, clash by day as well as night. Chicago is America's dream, writ large. And flamboyantly.
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I never drove a car. I'm hopeless that way. I press the wrong buttons on the tape recorder. But if the person I'm interviewing helps me out, that person feels needed. People need to feel needed.