Theodore Zeldin Quotes & Sayings

What we make of people, and what we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves, depends on what we know of the world, what we believe to be possible, what memories we have, and whether our loyalties are to the past, the present or the future. — Theodore Zeldin

The British have turned their sense of humour into a national virtue. It is odd, because through much of history, humour has been considered cheap, and laughter something for the lower orders. But British aristocrats didn't care a damn about what people thought of them, so they made humour acceptable. — Theodore Zeldin

Two individuals, conversing honestly, can be inspired by the feeling that they are engaged in a joint enterprise, aiming at inventing an art which has not been tried before. — Theodore Zeldin

We should strive to be employed in such a way that we don't realize that what we're doing is work. — Theodore Zeldin

A dream is what makes people love life even when it is painful. — Theodore Zeldin

Only when people learn to converse will they begin to be equal. — Theodore Zeldin

People in this world of superficial communication find themselves isolated and lonely and have difficult in talking about personal things that really matter to them. — Theodore Zeldin

I don't think there is anything a man can do that a woman cannot do. — Theodore Zeldin

Life could have been different if the meetings which have decided its course had been less silent, superficial or routine, if more thoughts had been exchanged, if humanity had been more able to show itself in them — Theodore Zeldin

The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them. — Theodore Zeldin

Breaking accepted rules does bring people together. — Theodore Zeldin

When will we make the same breakthroughs in the way we treat each other as we have made in technology? — Theodore Zeldin

No history of the world can be complete which does not mention Mary Helen Keller ... whose overcoming of her blindness and deafness were arguably victories more important than those of Alexander the Great, because they have implications still for every living person. — Theodore Zeldin

The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person. — Theodore Zeldin

I particularly value conversations which are meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't, with people who are different from myself. — Theodore Zeldin

Each person is an enigma. You're a puzzle not only to yourself but also to everyone else, and the great mystery of our time is how we penetrate this puzzle. — Theodore Zeldin

All invention and progress comes from finding a link between two ideas that have never met. — Theodore Zeldin

We should abolish 'work.' By that I mean abolishing the distinction between work and leisure, one of the greatest mistakes of the last century, one that enables employers to keep workers in lousy jobs by granting them some leisure time. — Theodore Zeldin

Brilliant lecturers shouldn't be wasted in lecture rooms: they should appear onTV. We need black market universities, in which people just help each other, and which don't leave out the poor. — Theodore Zeldin

We imagine that human nature doesn't change. We like to say that but I don't think it's true because we have, in the course of the centuries, altered ourselves. — Theodore Zeldin

Families have become models for public life, constructing friendships between individuals of different temperaments, ambitions and ages, even if they are often unsuccessful. People now want, above all, appreciation of their uniqueness. — Theodore Zeldin

Conversation creates a new kind of network within organizations. Current networks are used for competitive advantage, but conversation is focused on encouraging people to realize their potential. — Theodore Zeldin

People are going to be living quite soon for 100 years. Our idea of how a family works no longer applies. It's no good saying you're going to have children for 15 years and then you're going to retire and have hobbies, because you've got 40 more years to go after 60 and you're in good health until 90 or something. — Theodore Zeldin

The institution of marriage, if you look at it over many centuries, has come and gone. — Theodore Zeldin

The brain is full of lonely ideas, begging you to make some sense of them, to recognize them as interesting. The lazy brain just files them away in old pigeonholes, like a bureaucrat who wants an easy life. The lively brain picks and chooses and creates new works of art out of ideas. — Theodore Zeldin

Never before have humans been so ambitious, have they thought that they could be much more than their parents were. — Theodore Zeldin

The English reputation for humour is a way by which people avoid revealing themselves and have superficial relationships, so that you can engage in banter without making yourself vulnerable. — Theodore Zeldin

Literature must always be about gloom of one sort or another, on the principal that there is nothing interesting to be said about happy people. — Theodore Zeldin

Change the way you think, and you are halfway to changing the world. — Theodore Zeldin

I think the hero in our generation is not the individual but the pair, two people who together add up to more than they are apart. — Theodore Zeldin

Nothing influences our ability to cope with the difficulties of our existence so much as the context in which we view them; the more contexts we can choose between, the less do the difficulties appear to be inevitable and insurmountable. — Theodore Zeldin

Forks and spoons have probably done more to reconcile people who cannot agree than guns and bombs ever did — Theodore Zeldin

Art is, nowadays, our new religion and museums are our cathedrals. — Theodore Zeldin

Each civilization, each nation, each family, each profession, each sex and each class has its own history. Humans have so far been interested mainly in their own private roots, and have therefore never claimed the whole of the inheritance into which they were born, the legacy of everybody's past experience. Each generation searches only for what it thinks it lacks, and recognizes only what it knows already. — Theodore Zeldin

The Renaissance ... was based on a new idea of the importance of the individual. But this was a fragile foundation, because individuals depended on constant applause and admiration to sustain them. There is a shortage of applause in the world, and there is not enough respect to go around. — Theodore Zeldin

The great attraction of fashion is that it diverted attention from the insoluble problems of beauty and provided an easy way
which money could buy ... to a simply stated, easily reproduced ideal of beauty, however temporary that ideal. — Theodore Zeldin

Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards. — Theodore Zeldin

Everything I am going to say to you is the child of a conversation. [ ... ] That is the aspect of conversation that particularly excites me: how conversation changes the way you see the world, and even changes the world. — Theodore Zeldin

To idolise a person means you don't get to know them, and the idea that you can become one is a myth, and it also means that you don't need to talk to one another because you're the same person. — Theodore Zeldin

The violent have been victorious for most of history because they kindled the fear with which everyone is born. — Theodore Zeldin

We are already seeing the creation of a new kind of network based on friendships: Startups, which are often founded by friends, are the beginning of something that could reshape social relations. — Theodore Zeldin

The great thing about marriage is that it creates trust, the most precious of things. — Theodore Zeldin

The French have made conversation their claim to civilisation. — Theodore Zeldin

One of the great ambitions is to discover the diversity of the world, to discover who inhabits the world. — Theodore Zeldin

To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they control it, wish to influence its direction. — Theodore Zeldin