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You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.

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
Talking
Happens
Cowardly
Agnostic
Atheist
Atheism
Happen

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You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
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I read somewhere that when a person takes part in community action, his health improves. Something happens to him or to her biologically. It's like a tonic.
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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.
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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 a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.
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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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The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.
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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.
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I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.
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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.
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We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.
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Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
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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.
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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.
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All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library.
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Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
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