Studs Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster based in Chicago.
— Learn more at wikipedia.org
Selected quotes:
“I hope for peace and sanity — it’s the same thing.”
“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.”
Conversation with future Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing in 1969:
Lessing: “You do still have gangsters [in Chicago], don’t you?”
Terkel: “Yes, but these days they’re mostly in business or politics.”
“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.”