Theodore Zeldin Quotes

...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.

I invented something called The Oxford Muse. The Muses were women in mythology. They did not teach or require to be worshipped, but they were a source of inspiration. They taught you how to cultivate your emotions through the different arts in order to reach a higher plane. What is lacking now, I believe, is somewhere you can get that stimulation not information, but stimulation where you can meet just that person, or find just that situation, which will give you the idea of invention, of carrying out some project which interests you, and show how it can become a project of interest to other people.

Even Gandhi, with all his charisma, did not "melt the hearts" of his oppressors, as he had hoped. After softening, hearts harden again. Asoka too was wrong to think that he was changing the course of history, and that his righteousness would last "as long as the sun and the moon."

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Tüm cevapları bulmak gibi beklentisi olmayan sonsuz bir yola koyulmak, belirli bir hedefe doğru yolculuk yapmaktan daha ufuk açıcı olmuştur her zaman; çünkü böylelikle önceden belirlenmiş hedeflerden çok daha tatmin edici yan yollara sapma özgürlüğü kalır insanın.

The vast majority of scientists devote a large part of their efforts to writing articles which are never read.

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.

The temptation before 1933 was to believe in Hitler as a savior, to believe in a national rebirth. The path to National Socialism led through a wasteland of personal fears, collective anxiety, and resentments. The temptation was to surrender oneself to a dictator, to believe in a miracle. Hitler evoked human will and divine providence. The religious-mystical element in National Socialism was uncannily appealing to unpolitical people, to unrealistic people at odds with their world and accustomed perhaps to the dream of heroic irrationalism. The temptation was to abandon oneself to national delirium— despite (or even because of) the threat of violence.