Studs Terkel > Quotes

“I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.”
― Studs Terkel

“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.”
― Studs Terkel

“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

“You know, 'power corrupts, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely?' It's the same with powerlessness.
Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein
said everything had changed since the atom was split,
except the way we think. We have to think anew.”
― Studs Terkel

“What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling . . . In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. (p. 176)”
― Studs Terkel, Touch and Go: A Memoir

“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.”
― Studs Terkel

“Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph”
― Studs Terkel

“More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.”
― Studs Terkel

“What's it like to be that goofy little soldier, scared stiff, with his bayonet aimed at Christ? What's it like to have been a woman in a defense-plant job during World War II? What's it like to be a kid at the front lines? It's all funny and tragic at the same time”
― Studs Terkel

“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.”
― Studs Terkel, Touch and Go: A Memoir

“I am paraphrasing Einstein. I love to do that: nobody dares contradict me.”
― Studs Terkel

“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, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

“Most people were raised to think they are not worthy. School is a process of taking beautiful kids who are filled with life and beating them into happy slavery. That's as true of a twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year executive as it is for the poorest."
Bill Talcott - Organizer”
― Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

“I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.”
― Studs Terkel

“God, grant me serenity to accept those things I can't change, the courage to change those I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

-Division St.”
― Studs Terkel

“A man? If I need a man, wouldn't you think I'd have one of my own? Must I wait for you?”
― Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

“How goddamn foolish it is, the war. They's no war in the worth that's worth fightin' for. I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote 'em are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are starvin' to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with how much you make one big shell of. ~Alvin "Tommy" Bridges”
― Studs Terkel

“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.”
― Studs Terkel