My neighbors were angry with my mother, because she fed hungry men at the back door. They said it would bring others, and then what would she do? She… - Studs Terkel

I was walking downstairs carrying a drink in one hand and a book in the other. Don't try that after ninety.

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.

I think we’d hurt more now if we had a Depression. You don’t see how they’d make it if it happened to ’em again. Because they take a lot of things for granted. I mean, you see ’em now and they have everything. You can’t imagine how they would act if they didn’t have it. If they would even remember what they did. ’Cause they’re past it now. They already done it, and they figure they’re over it. If we fell now, I think everybody would take it a lot harder. Everybody’d step on each other. They’d just walk all over and kill each other. They got more than they ever need that they’d just step on anybody to keep it. They got cars, they got houses, they got this and that. It’s more than they need, but they think they need it, so they want to keep it. Human life isn’t as important as what they got