Quote

Ordinary' is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.

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

More quotes by Studs Terkel

Image
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.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.
Studs Terkel
Image
When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
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
You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
I'd want the human voice expressing grievances, or delight, or whatever it might be. But something real
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
Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Studs Terkel
Image
Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being.
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
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
Image
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
Image
I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.
Studs Terkel
Image
Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
Studs Terkel