Studs Terkel famous quotes

How come you don't work fourteen hours a day? Your great-great-grandparents did. How come you only work the eight-hour day? Four guys got hanged fighting for the eight-hour day for you.
-- Studs Terkel

#Fighting #Eight #Grandparent

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Phones #Government #Gone

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Knowledge #Thinking #Years

I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.
-- Studs Terkel

#Differences #People #Want

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Book #People #Information

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.
-- Studs Terkel

#Friday #Monday #Dying

Work is born in us. We take to it kindly or unkindly. The terms may be easy or harsh, but the contract is binding.
-- Studs Terkel

#May #Easy #Harsh

People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being.
-- Studs Terkel

#People #Stories #Hungry

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Men #People #Pieces

All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
-- Studs Terkel

#Library #Needs #Life Is

Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
-- Studs Terkel

#Jobs #Vision #Spirit

But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
-- Studs Terkel

#Realizing #Excited #Active

I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.
-- Studs Terkel

#Dare

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.
-- Studs Terkel

#Grace #Want

Don't be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.
-- Studs Terkel

One of the definitive works on gay life. Through this collective testimony we may come to understand what it is to be 'the other'; in short, the other part of ourselves.
-- Studs Terkel

#Gay #Testimony

I am paraphrasing Einstein. I love to do that: nobody dares contradict me.
-- Studs Terkel

#Dare #Paraphrasing

Smug respectability, like the poor, we've had with us always. Today, however, ... such obtuseness is an indulgence we can no longer afford. The computer, nuclear energy for better or worse, and sudden, simultaneous influences upon everyone's TV screen have raised the ante and the risk considerably.
-- Studs Terkel

#Risk #Today #Tvs

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?
-- Studs Terkel

#Jobs #War #Book

Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.
-- Studs Terkel

#Spring

We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.
-- Studs Terkel

#Realist #Born

I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.
-- Studs Terkel

#Hero #Past #Years

Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph
-- Studs Terkel

#Cat #Curiosity #Epitaph

More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.
-- Studs Terkel

#Communication

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Thinking #Atoms #Splits

People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are ready for single-payer health insurance.' We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations.
-- Studs Terkel

#Country #People #World

Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.
-- Studs Terkel

#Baseball #Unions #Marvin

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'.
-- Studs Terkel

#Hero #Responsibility #Thinking

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Order #Play #Balance

I'm celebrated for celebrating the uncelebrated.
-- Studs Terkel

#Recognition #Celebrate

You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.
-- Studs Terkel

#Atheist #Talking #Atheism

I find labels "liberal" and "conservative" of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.
-- Studs Terkel

#Perspective #Littles #Labels

If solace is any sort of succor to someone, that is sufficient. I believe in the faith of people, whatever faith they may have.
-- Studs Terkel

#Faith #Believe #People

I'd want the human voice expressing grievances, or delight, or whatever it might be. But something real
-- Studs Terkel

#Real #Voice #Delight

Something was still there, that something that distinguishes an artist from a performer: the revealing of self. Here I be. Not forlong, but here I be. In sensing her mortality, we sensed our own.
-- Studs Terkel

#Artist #Self #Jazz

We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.'
-- Studs Terkel

#Nice #Vocabulary #Use

Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
-- Studs Terkel

#Book #Religion #Roles

Ordinary' is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.
-- Studs Terkel

#Air #People #Ordinary

So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.
-- Studs Terkel

#Tomorrow #Be Good

An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
-- Studs Terkel

#Atheist #Belief #Agnostic

To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.
-- Studs Terkel

#Survival #Triumph #Enough

If there is knowledge, it lies in the fusion of the book and the street.
-- Studs Terkel

#Lying #Book #Fusion

Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.
-- Studs Terkel

#Jobs #People #Lines

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Years #Down And #Littles

Reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation.
-- Studs Terkel

#Reading #Book #Exercise

I read somewhere that when a person takes part in community action, his health improves. Something happens to him or to her biologically. It's like a tonic.
-- Studs Terkel

#Health #Community #Action

I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.
-- Studs Terkel

#Sanity

I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.
-- Studs Terkel

#Memories

I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic.
-- Studs Terkel

#Thinking #Despair #World

I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
-- Studs Terkel

#Book #Writing

I want a language that speaks the truth.
-- Studs Terkel

#Want #Language #Speak

I'm not up on the Internet, but I hear that is a democratic possibility. People can connect with each other. I think people are ready for something, but there is no leadership to offer it to them. People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are part of a world.
-- Studs Terkel

#Thinking #People #World

My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat.
-- Studs Terkel

#Cat #Curiosity #Epitaph

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Missing #Argument #Debate

Last year I picked up the New York Times and there was a story about a kid from Dartmouth who was bragging that he never left his room, and made dates and ordered pizza with his computer. The piece de resistance of this story was that he had two roommates, and he was proud of the fact that he only talked to them by computer.
-- Studs Terkel

#New York #Children #Kids

I'm not a Luddite completely; I believe in refrigerators to cool my martinis, and washing machines because I hate to see women smacking their laundry against a rock. When I hear about hardware, I think of pots and pans, and when I hear about software, I think of sheets and towels.
-- Studs Terkel

#Hate #Believe #Thinking

One day I visited a guy who had made a fortune as a broker. He was sitting in his office with his computer. I hire people from here and make deals from this room, he told me. Then he took me to the trading room. Nobody was talking to anybody else, the place was silent as a tomb, they were all sitting there watching their terminals - a great word, terminal. I tell you, it scares the crap out of me.
-- Studs Terkel

#Talking #Office #People

The issue is jobs. You can't get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket and feeling like somebody.
-- Studs Terkel

#Jobs #Two #Issues

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. (p. 176)
-- Studs Terkel

#Air #Talking #People

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
-- Studs Terkel

#Cities #Chicago

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
-- Studs Terkel

#People #Stories #Generations

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Important #Way #March

When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
-- Studs Terkel

#Views #Democracy #News

Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace.
-- Studs Terkel

#Believe #Envy #People

The history of those who shed those other tears, the history of those anonymous millions, is what Terkel wants readers and listeners to come away with. What's it like to be that goofy little soldier, scared stiff, with his bayonet aimed at Christ? What's it like to have been a woman in a defense-plant job during World War II? What's it like to be a kid at the front lines? It's all funny and tragic at the same time.
-- Studs Terkel

#Funny #Jobs #War

I presumably lost $150,000 in the depression of 1937—on my one stock investment—because I did everything Lehman Brothers told me. I said, well, this is a fool’s procedure . . . buying stock in other people’s businesses.
-- Studs Terkel

#Brother #People #Buying

I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.
-- Studs Terkel

#Hopeful #Optimist

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.
-- Studs Terkel

#Optimism #People #Despair