Theodore Zeldin Quotes

Numai atunci cand vor invata sa dialogheze oamenii vor incepe sa fie egali.

It takes a long time for people to recognize their soul-mates when they have too limited an idea of who they are themselves.

Ekonomik gelişme, refah ürettiği kadar sefalet de doğurmuştur her zaman. İnsanların çoğunluğunun yoksul olmadığı dönem ne zamandı? Bazıları eskisinden daha az yoksul hale gelse de sefaleti bitirmeye yönelik tüm girişimler başarısız kaldı. Para icat oldu olalı hiçbir zaman herkesin istediğini veya ihtiyaç duyduğunu almasına yetecek kadar olmadı. Yeterince para hiçbir zaman var olamaz.

television wears away the capacity to be astonished’.

Everybody’s style of speaking is a mixture of echoes dating from different epochs of the past: hers recalls the prudent and modest civil servants of the last century who were proud that they represented the state and who took care not to compromise themselves by saying the wrong thing.

Die verborgenen Gedanken in den Köpfen der Anderen sind das große Dunkel, das uns umgibt.

The world is filled with polite, shy, inscrutable, unintelligible, tight lipped, superficial, dishonest and also honest people who for one reason or another do not say what they think. The search for freedom of speech has barely begun. Many do not reveal their thoughts because they are not sure what they think. Many would be braver in their speech if they were more certain of a sympathetic hearing. Many, particularly in places where success depends on conformity, are schooled to be hypocrites. The hidden thoughts in other people’s heads are the great darkness that surrounds us.

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.

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

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.

A new way of looking is needed in a world which believes that every individual has a right to flower, within limits, in his or her own way.

...literature must always be about gloom of one sort or another, on the principle that there is nothing interesting to be said about happy people.

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.

Özgürlük, yalnızca bir hak değildir; kazanılması gereken bir beceridir aynı zamanda; insanın dünyayı kendi göz mercekleri dışında farklı mercekler altında görebilme ve daha önce kimsenin hayal etmediği bir şeyi hayal etme becerisidir, güzellik, anlam ve ilham bulmaktır. Her hayat, özgürlük hakkında yazılmış bir hikayedir.

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