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Studs Terkel Quotes


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?

But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.

I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.

I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.

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

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.

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

I want a language that speaks the truth.

I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.

I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.

I'm not up on the Internet, but I hear that is a democratic possibility. People can connect with each other. I think people are ready for something, but there is no leadership to offer it to them. People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are part of a world.'

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.

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

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.

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.

Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.

So people are ready. I feel hopeful in that sense.

Someone who does an act. In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist; that is, you participate. It could be a letter written to an editor.