Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Studs Terkel

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.'

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I want a language that speaks the truth.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.'

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

More and more we are into communications; and less and less into 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.

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.

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.

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

Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.

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

Don't be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.

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

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)

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

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

Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.

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'.

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.

One night a guy hit his head on a welding gun. He went to his knees. He was bleeding like a pig, blood was oozing out. So I stopped the line for a second and ran over to help him. The foreman turned the line on again, he almost stepped on the guy. That's the first thing they always do. They didn't even call an ambulance. The guy walked to the medic department -- that's about half a mile -- he had about five stitches put in his head. The foreman didn't say anything. He just turned the line on. You're nothing to any of them.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.

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.

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 answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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