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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

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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
Great
Hour
Work
Guys
Labor
Broadcasters
Four
Hanged
Guy
Grandparents
Hours
Fourteen
Fighting
Grandparent
Come
Eight

More quotes by Studs Terkel

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The issue is jobs. You can't get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket and feeling like somebody.
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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
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Work is born in us. We take to it kindly or unkindly. The terms may be easy or harsh, but the contract is binding.
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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.
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Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.
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I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.
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I'd want the human voice expressing grievances, or delight, or whatever it might be. But something real
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You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.
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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.
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An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
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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.
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Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
Studs Terkel
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Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.
Studs Terkel
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I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.
Studs Terkel
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Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.
Studs Terkel
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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
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The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.
Studs Terkel
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My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.
Studs Terkel
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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
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But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
Studs Terkel