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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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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
Air
Ordinary
Word
Come
Patronizing
Done
Loathe
Things
Extraordinary
People
Across
Standards

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I was born in the year the Titanic sank. The Titanic went down, and I came up. That tells you a little about the fairness of life.
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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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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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Never go to bed with someone whose problems are greater than yours.
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Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
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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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Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.
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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.
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I want a language that speaks the truth.
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Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
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I'd want the human voice expressing grievances, or delight, or whatever it might be. But something real
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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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Work is born in us. We take to it kindly or unkindly. The terms may be easy or harsh, but the contract is binding.
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You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
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Dorothy Day said - and I'm sure that Kathy Kelly would say the same thing - 'I'm working toward a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently.' Now, think about that: a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently.
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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.
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Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.
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The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.
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