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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.

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
Sorts
Debate
Argument
Missing
Accepting
Instead
Things

More quotes by 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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When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
Studs Terkel
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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.
Studs Terkel
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I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.
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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Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
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 I put the plate down, you don't hear a sound. When I pick up a glass, I want it to be just right. When someone says, How come you're just a waitress? I say, Don't you think you deserve being served by me?
Studs Terkel
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I suppose if I have an epitaph it would be: Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat. I don't see retiring in the sense that we view it - I don't see how I could. Dying at the microphone or at the typewriter would not be bad.
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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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.
Studs Terkel
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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
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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.
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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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.
Studs Terkel
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I'd want the human voice expressing grievances, or delight, or whatever it might be. But something real
Studs Terkel
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Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
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 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 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