Theodore Zeldin

Judaism is not a dogmatic religion but one which loves debate, in which scholarship has played a big part. Scholars never agree…

— Theodore Zeldin

I think it's impossible to predict the future but it is possible to look at the past and see how one can…

— Theodore Zeldin

The brain is full of lonely ideas, begging you to make some sense of them, to recognize them as interesting. The lazy…

— Theodore Zeldin

It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, to…

— 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,…

— Theodore Zeldin

The Renaissance… was based on a new idea of the importance of the individual. But this was a fragile foundation, because individuals…

— 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…

— Theodore Zeldin

“...literature must always be about gloom of one sort or another, on the principal that there is nothing interesting to be said…

— Theodore Zeldin

“life could have been different if the meetings which have decided its course had been less silent, superficial or routine, if more…

— Theodore Zeldin

What's missing from the world is a sense of direction.

— 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

I'm amazed at the number of young women who tell me they can't find men to talk to them.

— Theodore Zeldin

You cannot measure the minute nuance that makes the difference between being happy and unhappy at work.

— Theodore Zeldin

Nothing influences our ability to cope with the difficulties of our existence so much as the context in which we view them;…

— Theodore Zeldin

The world is... often terrifying, disgusting and tragic, but it is also beautiful. I should like to know how exactly each person…

— Theodore Zeldin

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

— Theodore Zeldin

Families have become models for public life, constructing friendships between individuals of different temperaments, ambitions and ages, even if they are often…

— Theodore Zeldin

To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who,…

— Theodore Zeldin

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

— Theodore Zeldin

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

— Theodore Zeldin

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

— Theodore Zeldin

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

— Theodore Zeldin

Conversation creates a new kind of network within organizations. Current networks are used for competitive advantage, but conversation is focused on encouraging…

— Theodore Zeldin

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

— Theodore Zeldin

The great attraction of fashion is that it diverted attention from the insoluble problems of beauty and provided an easy way --…

— Theodore Zeldin