Studs Terkel Quotes (47 Quotes)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

One time, ... I was doing 'Studs Place,' my early TV show, and I'm supposed to be quitting cigars and I'm yearning for a smoke and I quote from the 'Odyssey.' I say, I am Ulysses passing the Isle of Circe. Meaning I got these temptations. Truck drivers called in and said they liked the classical reference.

His ingenuity and his faith in the good taste of people are what made WFMT. He believed the public and by that he meant ordinary people deserved the best in broadcasting.

I originally said, No,' ... I was feeling not so much scared as lost. There was a one in four chance that I wouldn't make it.

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

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.

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

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.'

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

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.

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

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

Take it easy, but take it.

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.

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

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 could have grown up in New York, Chicago or any dirty, industrial city full of conflict, hustle and color. He could definitely not have grown up in San Francisco or L.A.

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.

American filmmakers ventured into Vietnam during the 1970s and 1980s with mixed results, but by the 1990s the baby boomers seemed increasingly eager to do an end run around their generation's war and all it represented, to embrace that of their fathers and grandfathers. Perhaps because, as an American veteran in the book 'The Good War' An Oral History of World War II, ... It was the last time that most Americans thought they were innocent and good, without qualifications.

So people are ready. I feel hopeful in that sense.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Aug. 9, the day of the operation, you know what day that was Sixty years to the day the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Amazing... the human race designs something like that, something that kills, and then the same human race designs things to save human life.

So here we are. We have a choice to make.

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.

I'm seeing something and I'm not standing silent about it. Humans are pushed out to make room for cars.

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

Once I was at the Atlanta airport. I was taking the train between terminals. Its a smooth, quiet train, and it was jammed when I walked in. But it was absolutely quiet except for a mechanical voice calling out the stops. The doors were about to close, a couple rushes in and the mechanical voice says, Because of late entry, the train will be delayed for 30 seconds. People were staring at the couple, they were angry, and I yelled out, George Orwell, your time has come and gone, things are so efficient were losing our humanity and our sense of humor. Now there are three miscreants The crowd is staring at me and at the young couple. Sitting nearby was a baby on a mothers lap. I asked the baby, What do you think about this She laughs, and I say, A human voice at last Theres still hope.

I want a language that speaks the truth.

Suddenly the sirens are sounding all over Chicago. At the time, the Cold War was going on between us and Russia, and there was great fear through the air. And when people heard the sirens, old women had heart attacks and kids ran under beds because that's what they were taught in school. I remember that moment most, the sirens going on and people not celebrating the Sox but hurrying to the grocery store to store up on stuff for the next month of siege, for they believed the Russians were coming.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Im 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.

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