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

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

More quotes by Studs Terkel

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I find labels liberal and conservative of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.
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Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
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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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Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.
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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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On the evening bus, the tense, pinched faces of young file clerks and elderly secretaries tell us more than we care to know. On the expressways, middle management men pose without grace behind their wheels as they flee city and job.
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Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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I guess I was seeking some balance in the wildlife of the city as Rachel Carson sought it in nature. In unbalanced times, balance is as difficult to come by as Parsifal's Grail.
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Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
Studs Terkel
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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.
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There are nascent stirrings in the neighborhood and in the field, articulated by non-celebrated people who bespeak the dreams of their fellows. It may be catching. Unfortunately, it is not covered on the six o'clock news.
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I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.
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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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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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You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.
Studs Terkel