Freeman Tilden Quotes & Sayings

Compared with the usual fate of humans, we who are engaged in preservation work, daily in contact with what we most like and admire, are fortunate indeed. As I write this, I have just returned from a gathering of men and women in the museum and historic-house field. What cheerful, rapt faces! What intensity of interest! What freedom of discussion, where difference of opinion about procedure was taken for granted and met with a smile. Do you really think this is common experience in the workaday world? Are you unaware of the fact that most people often feel that they are traveling the wrong road, and bitterly conclude that it is too late to return to a distant fork? — Freeman Tilden

The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation. — Freeman Tilden

An educational activity which aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objects, by firsthand experience, and by illustrative media, rather than simply to communicate factual information. — Freeman Tilden

...you sometimes note an impatience on the part of a specialist that the public does not show sufficient interest in his assemblage of information as such. He is likely to conclude that the average person is somewhat stupid. The opposite is true. It is a sign of native intelligence on the part of any person not to clutter his mind with indigestibles. — Freeman Tilden

I have always thought of our Service as an institution, more than any other bureau, engaged in a field essentially of morality
the aim of man to rise above himself, and to choose the option of quality rather than material superfluity. — Freeman Tilden