Theodore Zeldin quotes - page 2

When two people talk with mutual respect and listen with a real interest in understanding another point of view, when they try to put themselves in the place of another, to get inside their skin, they change the world, even if it is only by a minute amount, because they are establishing equality between two human beings. (Theodore Zeldin)
It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, to attempt to increase, by even a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
You have to accept that traditions exist, that people don't change their minds very quickly, that people are scared. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
Gastronomy has done more to bring together people of the world than any guns ever could. View quote
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. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
Judaism is not a dogmatic religion but one which loves debate, in which scholarship has played a big part. Scholars never agree about anything. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
I'm amazed at the number of young women who tell me they can't find men to talk to them. View quote
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. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
I don't think fear can be abolished. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
We cannot change public life until we have changed private life. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
The world is... often terrifying, disgusting and tragic, but it is also beautiful. I should like to know how exactly each person would make it a tiny bit less disgusting and a tiny bit more beautiful. (Theodore Zeldin)
The main purpose of engaging in conversation can no longer be personal advancement or respectability. Instead, I'd like for us to use conversations to create equality, to open ourselves to strangers, and, most practically, to remake our working world. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
I'm constantly astounded by the way people talk so openly to someone they don't know. They clarify in their own minds what is important to them, discover another person has similar problems, and create trust and even a friendship. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
What's missing from the world is a sense of direction. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
I don't think there is anything a man can do that a woman cannot do. View quote
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. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
The tendency of experts is to fiddle around with their expertise rather than trying to find new solutions. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
In every life there is an element of victory over fear, which needs to be searched for, though it may be a false victory. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
We think of speaking as something we do naturally, without any effort. But like playing music, it requires attention and knowledge and practice. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
You cannot measure the minute nuance that makes the difference between being happy and unhappy at work. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
However fascinating you may think you are, there is a limit to what you can know about yourself. (Theodore Zeldin)
France is an idea, not a territory. They pay more attention to intellectuals here; they give artists and writers the feeling they're valued. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Theodore Zeldin
When will we make the same breakthroughs in the way we treat each other as we have made in technology? View quote
Theodore Zeldin