Terkel Quotes & Sayings

Don't be an examiner, be the interested inquirer. — Studs Terkel

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.' — Studs Terkel

Work is born in us. We take to it kindly or unkindly. The terms may be easy or harsh, but the contract is binding. — Studs Terkel

Dorothy Day said - and I'm sure that Kathy Kelly would say the same thing - 'I'm working toward a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently.' Now, think about that: a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently. — Studs Terkel

I'm celebrated for celebrating the uncelebrated. — Studs Terkel

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

Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits. — Studs Terkel

I'm called an oral historian, which is something of a joke. Oral history was here long before the pen, long before Gutenberg and the printing press. The difference is I have a tape recorder in my hand. — Studs Terkel

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

I don't know what I'd like to do. That's what hurts the most. That's why I can't quit the job. I really don't know what talents I may have. And I don't know where to go to find out. I've been fostered so long by school and didn't have time to think about it. My father's in watch repair. That's always interested me, working with my hands, and independent. I don't think I'd mind going back and learning something, taking a piece of furniture and refinishing it. The type of thing where you know what you're doing and you can create and you can fix something to make it function. At the switchboard you don't do much of anything. — Studs Terkel

I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly-line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people. — Studs Terkel

Think of what's stored in an 80- or a 90-year-old mind. Just marvel at it. You've got to get out this information, this knowledge, because you've got something to pass on. There'll be nobody like you ever again. Make the most of every molecule you've got as long as you've got a second to go. — Studs Terkel

I find labels "liberal" and "conservative" of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us. — Studs Terkel

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.' — 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

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

Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality? — Studs Terkel

Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis. — Studs Terkel

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

One of the definitive works on gay life. Through this collective testimony we may come to understand what it is to be 'the other'; in short, the other part of ourselves. — Studs Terkel

Chicago is not the most corrupt of cities. The state of New Jersey has a couple. Need we mention Nevada? Chicago, though, is the Big Daddy. Not more corrupt, just more theatrical, more colorful in its shadiness. — Studs Terkel

I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

Curiosity never killed this cat' - that's what I'd like as my epitaph — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

I had grown up as a fan of Studs Terkel. In Chicago he sort of looms large and is mentioned often. — Dave Eggers

What I remember most of those times is that poverty creates desperation, and desperation creates violence. — Studs Terkel

After the stock market crash, some New York editors suggested that hearings be held: what had really caused the Depression? They were held in Washington. In retrospect, they make the finest comic reading. The leading industrialists and bankers testified. They hadn't the foggiest notion what had gone bad. You read a transcript of that record today with amazement: that they could be so unaware. This was their business, yet they didn't understand the operation of the economy. The only good witnesses were the college professors, who enjoyed a bad reputation in those years. No professor was supposed to know anything practical about the economy. — Studs Terkel

When I put the plate down, you don't hear a sound. When I pick up a glass, I want it to be just right. When someone says, "How come you're just a waitress?" I say, "Don't you think you deserve being served by me?" — Studs Terkel

We hear the term independent contractors in Iraq. Independent contractors? Mercenaries! — Studs Terkel

It is still the arena of those who dream of the City of Man and those who envision a City of Things. The battle appears to be forever joined. The armies, ignorant and enlightened, clash by day as well as night. Chicago is America's dream, writ large. And flamboyantly. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

The poor are so busy trying to survive from one day to the next, they haven't the time or energy to keep score. — 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

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. — Studs Terkel

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

If there is knowledge, it lies in the fusion of the book and the street. — Studs Terkel

That's why I wrote this book: to show how these people can imbue us with hope. I read somewhere that when a person takes part in community action, his health improves. Something happens to him or to her biologically. It's like a tonic. — Studs Terkel

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

I remember reading [ Studs Terkel's] "Working" when it first came out and just finding that very powerful. I was going into community organizing. What stuck was to reveal the sacredness of ordinary people's lives. That everybody has a story. And I think Studs is terrific at drawing out that shimmering quality of people's everyday struggles. — Barack Obama

An agnostic is a cowardly atheist. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication. — Studs Terkel

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

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

You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist. — Studs Terkel

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

We have two Governments in Washington: one run by the elected people - which is a minor part - and one run by the moneyed interests, which control everything. — Studs Terkel

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

The whole program of unemployment insurance, Social Security, was a confession of the failure of our whole social order. And confession of failure of Christian principles: that man, in fact, did not look after his brother. — Studs Terkel

I began to see how everything was so wrong. When growers can have an intricate watering system to irrigate their crops but they can't have running water inside the houses of workers. — Studs Terkel

In order for us, black and white, to disenthrall ourselves from the harshest slavemaster, racism, we must disinter our buried history ... We are all the Pilgrim, setting out on this journey. — Studs Terkel

Reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation. — Studs Terkel

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

The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again. — Studs Terkel

We had to go to stew school for five weeks. We'd go through a whole week of make-up and poise. I didn't like this. They make you feel like you've never been out in public. They showed you how to smoke a cigarette, when to smoke a cigarette, how to look at a man's eyes. Our teacher, she had this idea we had to be sexy. One day in class she was showing us how to accept a light for a cigarette from a man and never blow it out. When he lights it, just look in his eyes. It was really funny, all the girls laughed. — Studs Terkel

I can't imagine a job where you go home and maybe go by a year later and you don't know what you've done. My work, I can see what I did the first day I started. All my work is set right out there in the open and I can look at it as I go by. It's something I can see the rest of my life. — Studs Terkel

I feel guilty because I think people should do something they really like to do in life. I should do something else, but there is nothing I can do really well. I'm established and make a steady living, so it becomes pretty easy. It's not very fulfilling . . . but I'm lazy, I admit it. It's an easier thing to do. — Studs Terkel

My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

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

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. — Studs Terkel

I don't know if I'm partisan to the underdog or whether I'm the underdog. — Studs Terkel

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

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. — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

I said, "Suppose communists come out against cancer, do we have to automatically come out for cancer?'" I can't take back that I'm against the poll tax, that I'm against lynching, that I'm for peace. — Studs Terkel

The total cost of the Federal Arts Project was only $23 million. Many of these paintings, sculptures and prints were given to museums, courthouses, public buildings. . .. I think that today those in museums alone are worth about $100 million. — Studs Terkel

You should have seen the things they were giving babies instead of milk. I remember seeing them put salt-pork gravy in milk bottles and putting a nipple on, and the baby sucking this salt-pork gravy. A real blue baby, dying of starvation. In house after house, I saw that sort of thing. — Studs Terkel

When I get kind of low, I'd think about a verse I learned at one time, when everybody was fighting me. It went something like this: He has no enemies, you say, My friend, the boast is poor. He who hath mingled in the fray Of duty that the brave endure Must have foes. If he has none, Small is the work he has done. He has hit no traitor on the hip, Has cast no cup from perjured lip, Has never turned the wrong to right, He's been a coward in the fight. — Studs Terkel

So, my credo consists of the pursuit and the act. One without the other is self-indulgence. — Studs Terkel

We thought of the poor, at that time, as quite divorced from us, who were not poor. By the exercise of one's charity, life could be made all right. You would always have the poor with you, they were the unfortunate, and you made donations. You could handle them. It was mildly unpleasant, but not fundamentally upsetting. Now, for the first time, we face the dreadful reality that we are not separated. They are us. They are something we have made. There is no conceivable way today to say: Fish, and you'll be all right. In hurt, in anguish, in shock, we are becoming aware that it is ourselves, who have to be found wanting, not the poor. — 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

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

We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be. — Studs Terkel

The Grand Illusion, one of the great war films of all time. — Studs Terkel

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

Who knows Bob's name in this outfit - let alone his lame child's? ("The last place I worked for, I was let go," recalls the bank teller. "One of my friends stopped by and asked where I was at. They said, 'She's no longer with us.' That's all. I vanished.") It's nothing personal, really. Dickens's people have been replaced by Beckett's. — Studs Terkel

I presumably lost $150,000 in the depression of 1937 - on my one stock investment - because I did everything Lehman Brothers told me. I said, well, this is a fool's procedure ... buying stock in other people's businesses. — Studs Terkel

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? — Studs Terkel

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

I'll never forget one of the first families I visited. The father was a railroad man who had lost his job. I was told by my supervisor that I really had to see the poverty. If the family needed clothing, I was to investigate how much clothing they had at hand. So I looked into this man's closet - (pauses, it becomes difficult) - he was a tall, gray-haired man, though not terribly old. He let me look in the closet - he was so insulted. (She weeps angrily.) He said, "Why are you doing this?" I remember his feeling of humiliation . . . this terrible humiliation. (She can't continue. After a pause, she resumes.) He said, "I really haven't anything to hide, but if you really must look into it. . .." I could see he was very proud. He was so deeply humiliated. And I was, too. . .. — Studs Terkel

All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library. — Studs Terkel

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

They say all people who lived under Hitler were bad because they fought the war with him. That is wrong. We can't say all people were bad. We must find out why they were with him. If you want to make something better, you must know the reasons why it was wrong and what has happened. My — Studs Terkel

I'll never forget that Depression Easter Sunday. Our son was four years old. I bought ten or fifteen cents' worth of eggs. You didn't get too many eggs for that. But we were down. Margaret said, 'Why he'll find those in five minutes.' I had a couple in the piano and all around. Tommy got his little Easter basket, and as he would find the eggs, I'd steal 'em out of the basket and re-hide them. The kid had more fun that Easter than he ever had. He hunted Easter eggs for three hours and he never knew the difference. (Laughs.) "My son is now thirty-nine years old. And I bore him to death every Easter with the story. He never even noticed his bag full of Easter eggs never got any fuller. . . . — Studs Terkel

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. — Studs Terkel

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

I'm sure that in Germany people also took an oath of secrecy. We know what that eventually led to. If it works that way with us, the sanctions for breaking the secrecy are nothing compared to the sanctions there could be if we're silent. All — Studs Terkel

Work is a search for daily meaning
as well as for daily bread. — Studs Terkel

It is about a search, too, 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. Perhaps immortality, too, is part of the quest. To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes and heroines of this book. — Studs Terkel

Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far. — Studs Terkel

I want a language that speaks the truth. — Studs Terkel

You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name. — Studs Terkel

It was an exciting community, where we lived in Washington. The basic feeling - and I don't think this is just nostalgia - was one of excitement, of achievement, of happiness. Life was important, life was significant. — Studs Terkel

I never drove a car. I'm hopeless that way. I press the wrong buttons on the tape recorder. But if the person I'm interviewing helps me out, that person feels needed. People need to feel needed. — Studs Terkel

One night a guy hit his head on a welding gun. He went to his knees. He was bleeding like a pig, blood was oozing out. So I stopped the line for a second and ran over to help him. The foreman turned the line on again, he almost stepped on the guy. That's the first thing they always do. They didn't even call an ambulance. The guy walked to the medic department
that's about half a mile
he had about five stitches put in his head. The foreman didn't say anything. He just turned the line on. You're nothing to any of them. — Studs Terkel