Studs Terkel Quotes

67 quotes in 956 categories

• 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…
• I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.
• People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being.
• When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.
• I am paraphrasing Einstein. I love to do that: nobody dares contradict me.
• 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…
• 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,…
• 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…
• All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
• 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…
• But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
• I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.
• I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.
• 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…
• I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
• I want a language that speaks the truth.

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