Time & Perspective Quote by Studs Terkel

Terkel isn’t merely complimenting activists; he’s trying to rescue them from America’s favorite amnesia. The plainspoken repetition - “praise… praise” - reads like a moral drumbeat, less poetry than insistence. Coming from a journalist who built his career recording ordinary voices, the line signals a familiar Terkel move: shift cultural attention away from lone heroes and toward the long, grinding work of people who organized, protested, and got dismissed as troublemakers until history needed their victories.

The intent is archival as much as celebratory. “Through the years” widens the frame past whatever flashpoint prompted the remark, implying a lineage: today’s movements are not spontaneous eruptions but inheritances. That matters because it quietly rebukes a media cycle that treats activism as a trend - visible when it’s disruptive, disposable when it’s not. By pairing “activists” with “honored,” Terkel also tries to flip the stigma. Activists are often tolerated as necessary irritants; he argues they deserve the ceremonial language typically reserved for presidents, generals, and philanthropists.

The subtext is pointed: progress didn’t happen because institutions were enlightened; it happened because people pushed them. In the late 20th century, as the U.S. professionalized politics and sanitized dissent, praising activists “of the past” becomes a way to legitimize activists in the present - to say, if you like the rights you have, you’re already living in their aftermath. Terkel’s reverence is strategic: honor is a cultural weapon, and he wants it aimed at the correct architects.