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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.

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
Guess
City
Grail
Balance
Carson
Cities
Unbalanced
Times
Rachel
Difficult
Wildlife
Nature
Sought
Come
Seeking

More quotes by Studs Terkel

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I want a language that speaks the truth.
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My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.
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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.
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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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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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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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Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
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Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?
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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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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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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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More and more we are into communications and less and less into communication.
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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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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?
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Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.
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Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.
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When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.
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Ordinary' is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.
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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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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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