Studs Terkel Quotes

It was the Depression because no white and no blacks were working. The whites not working made it official.

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.

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread.

I’ve never understood a society of want. We don’t have a society of want — not on a general level. We have a society of total surplus: unwanted goods and unwanted people.

If they really want anarchy, let a Depression come now. My sixteen-year-old son is not the person I was when I was sixteen. He has manly responsibilities. And he doesn’t want any shit. When I was sixteen, I wasn’t afraid to die. But the kid, sixteen now, is not afraid to kill.

What about Hitler? He was one person. They were all doing what Hitler said. What do all prisoners do? They do what the warden says. The only power Hitler had was the power the people gave him. I felt the whole world had gone absolutely mad,

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.

Yet, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” opens up a political question. Why should this man be penniless at any time in his life, due to some fantastic thing called a Depression or sickness or whatever it is that makes him so insecure?

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. . ..

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

This coming December, it’ll be three years I made the trip to California. I got a sister out there. I stayed out there over the Christmas holidays and we went to Disneyland. Believe it or not, honest to God, I didn’t think such beautiful things existed in this world of ours. It was somethin’.

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

It was the time of the Oxford Pledge and the movement against Fascism; his temptation to go to Spain as a member of the Lincoln Brigade . . . 'I was an ideal recruit, alone, on the run, searching for something'; a serious affair with a schoolteacher, running away . . . 'This is part of the Depression. You lived in a fear of responsibility for another person. You backed off when someone got close.' . . . I was born out of the Depression. I gave up my illusions. No more Horatio Alger Jr. I had a few bad hours, a few bad years. But I found excitement. It was an awakening.

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.

In all epochs, there were at first doubts and the fear of stepping forth and speaking out, but the attribute that spurred the warriors on was hope. And the act. Seldom was there a despair or a sense of hopelessness. Some of those on the sidelines, the spectators, feeling helpless and impotent, had by the very nature of the passionate act of others become imbued with hope themselves.