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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.

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
Like
Workers
People
Line
Lines
Small
Bigs
Jobs
Spirit
Assembly
Enough
Worker

More quotes by Studs Terkel

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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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Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
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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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Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
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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
Studs Terkel
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Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.
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Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
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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 trouble with censorship is that once it starts it is hard to stop. Just about every book contains something that someone objects to.
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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.
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I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.
Studs Terkel
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Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far.
Studs Terkel
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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.
Studs Terkel
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More and more we are into communications and less and less into communication.
Studs Terkel
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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
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You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
Studs Terkel
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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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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.
Studs Terkel
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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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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.
Studs Terkel