Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Studs Terkel
Age: 96 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 16
Died: 2008
Died: October 31
Actor
Author
Historian
Journalist
Music Journalist
Poet Lawyer
Radio Personality
Writer
New York City
New York
Louis Terkel
Books
American
Felt
Decency
Facts
Providing
Book
Native
Always
Intelligence
People
Deep
Information

More quotes by Studs Terkel

Image
I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
Studs Terkel
Image
An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
Studs Terkel
Image
You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
Studs Terkel
Image
Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?
Studs Terkel
Image
Never go to bed with someone whose problems are greater than yours.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
Studs Terkel
Image
Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.
Studs Terkel
Image
I want a language that speaks the truth.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.
Studs Terkel
Image
More and more we are into communications and less and less into communication.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
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