Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Studs Terkel

Image
My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.
Studs Terkel
Image
People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being.
Studs Terkel
Image
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.
Studs Terkel
Image
I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.
Studs Terkel
Image
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.
Studs Terkel
Image
You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.
Studs Terkel
Image
Never go to bed with someone whose problems are greater than yours.
Studs Terkel
Image
Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?
Studs Terkel
Image
I want a language that speaks the truth.
Studs Terkel
Image
Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.
Studs Terkel
Image
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.
Studs Terkel
Image
I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.
Studs Terkel
Image
Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.
Studs Terkel
Image
Smug respectability, like the poor, we've had with us always. Today, however, ... such obtuseness is an indulgence we can no longer afford. The computer, nuclear energy for better or worse, and sudden, simultaneous influences upon everyone's TV screen have raised the ante and the risk considerably.
Studs Terkel
Image
Last year I picked up the New York Times and there was a story about a kid from Dartmouth who was bragging that he never left his room, and made dates and ordered pizza with his computer. The piece de resistance of this story was that he had two roommates, and he was proud of the fact that he only talked to them by computer.
Studs Terkel
Image
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.
Studs Terkel
Image
More and more we are into communications and less and less into communication.
Studs Terkel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.
Studs Terkel