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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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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
Terms
Term
Born
Unkindly
Easy
Kindly
May
Binding
Take
Contract
Work
Harsh
Contracts
More quotes by Studs Terkel
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
I want a language that speaks the truth.
Studs Terkel
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
All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
Studs Terkel
More and more we are into communications and less and less into communication.
Studs Terkel
I find labels liberal and conservative of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.
Studs Terkel
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
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
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
You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
Studs Terkel
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
Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.
Studs Terkel
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.
Studs Terkel
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
Ordinary' is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.
Studs Terkel
Unless there's a grassroots movement of some sort, with TV and the media in general in the hands of fewer and fewer people - the Murdochians, you know - all we hear is the one point of view. There has to be something communal.
Studs Terkel
Never go to bed with someone whose problems are greater than yours.
Studs Terkel
I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.
Studs Terkel
Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.
Studs Terkel
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
