97+ Studs Terkel Quotes On Education, Stereotypes And Work

Studs Terkel was an American journalist, author, and broadcaster. He was best known for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago. He wrote numerous books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Studs Terkel on education, stereotypes, work.

Top 10 Studs Terkel Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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
3. 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.
4. I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.
5. We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be.
6. Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.
7. Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.

Studs Terkel Short Quotes

• You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.
• To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.
• Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
• An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
• All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
• Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
• I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.
• My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.
• We hear the term independent contractors in Iraq. Independent contractors? Mercenaries!
• When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.

Studs Terkel Quotes About Work

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

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

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

Dorothy Day said - and I'm sure that Kathy Kelly would say the same thing - 'I'm working toward a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently.' Now, think about that: a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name. — Studs Terkel

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

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

Studs Terkel Quotes About Go

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

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

Never go to bed with someone whose problems are greater than yours. — Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel Quotes About People

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

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. — Studs Terkel

Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought. — Studs Terkel

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

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

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

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

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

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

People are hungry for stories. It — Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel Quotes About Hope

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

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

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

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

That's why I wrote this book: to show how these people can imbue us with hope. 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

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

So people are ready. I feel hopeful in that sense. — Studs Terkel

Why are we born? 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

Studs Terkel Quotes About Book

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

The trouble with censorship is that once it starts it is hard to stop. Just about every book contains something that someone objects to. — Studs Terkel

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

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

Studs Terkel Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

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. — Studs Terkel

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

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

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

I call myself a radical conservative. What's that? Well, let's analyze it. Go to the dictionary. Radical: One who gets to the roots of things. And I'm a conservative because I want to conserve the green of the grass, the potability of drinking water, the first amendment of the Constitution and whatever sanity we have left. — Studs Terkel

When I put the plate down, you don't hear a sound. When I pick up a glass, I want it to be just right. When someone says, "How come you're just a waitress?" I say, "Don't you think you deserve being served by me?" — Studs Terkel

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

Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality? — Studs Terkel

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

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. — Studs Terkel

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

Someone who does an act. In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist; that is, you participate. It could be a letter written to an editor. — Studs Terkel

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

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

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

For the next century, we've got to put together what we so carelessly tore apart with so little concern for those who were gonna follow us. ... You've got to sound off. — Studs Terkel

In order for us, black and white, to disenthrall ourselves from the harshest slavemaster, racism, we must disinter our buried history.... We are all the Pilgrim, setting out on this journey. — Studs Terkel

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

I guess I was seeking some balance in the wildlife of the city as Rachel Carson sought it in nature. In unbalanced times, balance is as difficult to come by as Parsifal's Grail. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again. — Studs Terkel

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

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

Taking life seriously requires taking death seriously. — Studs Terkel

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are the most powerful nation in the world, but we're not the only nation in the world. We are not the only people in the world. We are an important people, the wealthiest, the most powerful and, to a great extent, generous. But we are part of the world. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

I said, "Suppose communists come out against cancer, do we have to automatically come out for cancer?'" I can't take back that I'm against the poll tax, that I'm against lynching, that I'm for peace. — Studs Terkel

The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

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

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

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

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

Life Lessons by Studs Terkel

1. Studs Terkel's life teaches us to be curious, to ask questions, and to listen to the stories of people from all walks of life.
2. He also reminds us to be open-minded and to appreciate the diversity of the human experience.
3. Finally, Studs Terkel's legacy encourages us to take action and to use our voice to make the world a better place.