177 Quotes by Studs Terkel

Ordinary' is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.

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.

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.

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.

Don't be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.

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.

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

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

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.