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

More quotes by Studs Terkel

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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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You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.
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Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.
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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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I'd want the human voice expressing grievances, or delight, or whatever it might be. But something real
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More and more we are into communications and less and less into communication.
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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 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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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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But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
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You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
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The issue is jobs. You can't get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket and feeling like somebody.
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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?
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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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When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective,' all else is propaganda.
Studs Terkel
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Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.
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Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.
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An agnostic is a cowardly atheist.
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Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
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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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