The answer is to say 'No!' to authority when authority is wrong.

How come you don't work fourteen hours a day? Your great-great-grandparents did. How come you only work the eight-hour day? Four guys got hanged fighting for the eight-hour day for you.

People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel

Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.

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 want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.

We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be.

Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.

Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.

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.

More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

Three most important questions for a happy life:How can I help? How can I love? How can I belong?

Some journeys, we must take alone. The caterpillar does not judge itself for craving the cocoon. Do not fear the isolated path. There, you will not be lonely. You will meet yourself.

To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.

Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do, and then set yourself earnestly to do it.

Freedom is not an achievement but an opportunity.

The most malignant of enemies is the lust which abides within.

Life's not about expecting, hoping and wishing. It's about doing, being and becoming. It's about t Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

I'm still quite small-minded and small-town, and people look at me like, "You're too famous to remember me." I want to give them a tap on the shoulder and thank them.

Pominville is going to have to open a planned parenthood center!