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I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.

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
Hopeful
Optimist

More quotes by 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
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Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
Studs Terkel
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I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
Studs Terkel
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Ordinary' is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.
Studs Terkel
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I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.
Studs Terkel
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Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.
Studs Terkel
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When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
Studs Terkel
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The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.
Studs Terkel
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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
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All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
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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Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.
Studs Terkel
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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
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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.
Studs Terkel
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I find labels liberal and conservative of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.
Studs Terkel
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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
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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
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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
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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
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My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.
Studs Terkel