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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.

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
Little
Titanic
Years
Fairness
Life
Tells
Went
Came
Year
Born
Littles
Sank

More quotes by Studs Terkel

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Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?
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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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I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.
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I'm not a Luddite completely I believe in refrigerators to cool my martinis, and washing machines because I hate to see women smacking their laundry against a rock. When I hear about hardware, I think of pots and pans, and when I hear about software, I think of sheets and towels.
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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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I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.
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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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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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An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
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But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
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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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Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
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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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Never go to bed with someone whose problems are greater than yours.
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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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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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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
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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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I want a language that speaks the truth.
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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.
Studs Terkel