Studs Terkel Quotes

One day I visited a guy who had made a fortune as a broker. He was sitting in his office with his computer. I hire people from here and make deals from this room, he told me. Then he took me to the trading room. Nobody was talking to anybody else, the place was silent as a tomb, they were all sitting there watching their terminals a great word, terminal. I tell you, it scares the crap out of me.

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So here we are. We have a choice to make.

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We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow Hope so.'

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One time, ... I was doing 'Studs Place,' my early TV show, and I'm supposed to be quitting cigars and I'm yearning for a smoke and I quote from the 'Odyssey.' I say, I am Ulysses passing the Isle of Circe. Meaning I got these temptations. Truck drivers called in and said they liked the classical reference.

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I'm seeing something and I'm not standing silent about it. Humans are pushed out to make room for cars.

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I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.

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I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.

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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.

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Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

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Aug. 9, the day of the operation, you know what day that was Sixty years to the day the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Amazing... the human race designs something like that, something that kills, and then the same human race designs things to save human life.

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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 a language that speaks the truth.

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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 originally said, No,' ... I was feeling not so much scared as lost. There was a one in four chance that I wouldn't make it.

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With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope Despair If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.

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Why are we born 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 hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.

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Studs could have grown up in New York, Chicago or any dirty, industrial city full of conflict, hustle and color. He could definitely not have grown up in San Francisco or L.A.

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Once I was at the Atlanta airport. I was taking the train between terminals. Its a smooth, quiet train, and it was jammed when I walked in. But it was absolutely quiet except for a mechanical voice calling out the stops. The doors were about to close, a couple rushes in and the mechanical voice says, Because of late entry, the train will be delayed for 30 seconds. People were staring at the couple, they were angry, and I yelled out, George Orwell, your time has come and gone, things are so efficient were losing our humanity and our sense of humor. Now there are three miscreants The crowd is staring at me and at the young couple. Sitting nearby was a baby on a mothers lap. I asked the baby, What do you think about this She laughs, and I say, A human voice at last Theres still hope

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Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace.

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Suddenly the sirens are sounding all over Chicago. At the time, the Cold War was going on between us and Russia, and there was great fear through the air. And when people heard the sirens, old women had heart attacks and kids ran under beds because that's what they were taught in school. I remember that moment most, the sirens going on and people not celebrating the Sox but hurrying to the grocery store to store up on stuff for the next month of siege, for they believed the Russians were coming.

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Take it easy, but take it.

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If solace is any sort of succor to someone, that is sufficient. I believe in the faith of people, whatever faith they may have.

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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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His ingenuity and his faith in the good taste of people are what made WFMT. He believed the public and by that he meant ordinary people deserved the best in broadcasting.

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