Words matter. These are the best Theodore Zeldin Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The tendency of experts is to fiddle around with their expertise rather than trying to find new solutions.
The more education you do, the less you are capable of doing.
Gastronomy has done more to bring together people of the world than any guns ever could.
I think one of the most important changes of our time has been our attitude to fear. Every civilisation defends itself by keeping fears out and saying ‘we protect you from fear’. But it also produces new fears and throughout history people have changed the kind of fears which have worried them.
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.
We should strive to be employed in such a way that we don’t realize that what we’re doing is work.
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.
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.
The great thing about marriage is that it creates trust, the most precious of things.
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.
Judaism is not a dogmatic religion but one which loves debate, in which scholarship has played a big part. Scholars never agree about anything.
Breaking accepted rules does bring people together.
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.
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.
I’m amazed at the number of young women who tell me they can’t find men to talk to them.
I don’t think there is anything a man can do that a woman cannot do.
I don’t think fear can be abolished.
You have to accept that traditions exist, that people don’t change their minds very quickly, that people are scared.
What’s missing from the world is a sense of direction.
We cannot change public life until we have changed private life.
One of the great ambitions is to discover the diversity of the world, to discover who inhabits the world.
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.
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.
A dream is what makes people love life even when it is painful.
Change the way you think, and you are already halfway to changing the world.
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.
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.
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.
The French have made conversation their claim to civilisation.
The institution of marriage, if you look at it over many centuries, has come and gone.
