Latest Studs Terkel Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I suppose if I have an epitaph it would be: "Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat." I don't see retiring in the sense that we view it - I don't see how I could. Dying at the microphone or at the typewriter would not be bad.

  Studs Terkel

  Cat, Curiosity, Dying

• I cannot even picture myself retiring. What would I do? I'll always be doing something, asking somebody questions, even if there weren't a book.

  Studs Terkel

  Book, Retiring

• No matter what the issues are, it has to be handled at the grassroots. When you take part in something, even though that movement may lose, the juices start flowing and you feel you count. You count. Well, that's pretty important.

  Studs Terkel

  Important

• The people in Coming of Age were far less curmudgeonly than you would think. The greater percentage said that without the young we'd be lost. One woman, a former Southern belle, now 87, a philanthropist, says, "Well, these young, their history's been stolen from them. And what have we done to make them respect us?"

  Studs Terkel

  Thinking, People, Southern

  "The MoJo Interview: Studs Terkel". Interview With Dale Eastman, www.motherjones.com. September/October 1995.

• Unless there's a grassroots movement of some sort, with TV and the media in general in the hands of fewer and fewer people - the Murdochians, you know - all we hear is the one point of view. There has to be something communal.

  Studs Terkel

  People, Point Of View

• When I was asked: "Will shame do it?" Meaning: Will welfare people be shamed into getting respectable work? And I said that shame plays the biggest role there is: The biggest shame is that there is so much abundance around but that so many have so little and so few have so much. That's the shame.

  Studs Terkel

  People, Shame, Abundance

• A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

  Studs Terkel

  Hard Times, Guy, Great Depression

  "The MoJo Interview: Studs Terkel". Interview With Dale Eastman, www.motherjones.com. September/October 1995.

• If we're to have a future in the 21st century, we'll want to be able to say, "Now what was the 20th century like in the United States of America, the most powerful of all countries of that century? What was it like to be an ordinary person?"

  Studs Terkel

  Country, Powerful, 21st Century