Quote

I find labels liberal and conservative of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.

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
Little
Perspective
Many
Meaning
Along
Thoughts
Language
Perverted
Become
Liberal
Littles
Labels
Find
Conservative

More quotes by Studs Terkel

Image
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
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
All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
Studs Terkel
Image
All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?
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
Image
Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
Studs Terkel
Image
I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
Studs Terkel
Image
My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.
Studs Terkel
Image
The trouble with censorship is that once it starts it is hard to stop. Just about every book contains something that someone objects to.
Studs Terkel
Image
I'd want the human voice expressing grievances, or delight, or whatever it might be. But something real
Studs Terkel
Image
I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
Studs Terkel
Image
Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.
Studs Terkel
Image
Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.
Studs Terkel
Image
For the next century, we've got to put together what we so carelessly tore apart with so little concern for those who were gonna follow us. ... You've got to sound off.
Studs Terkel