Theodore Zeldin - Quotations

Quotations

"To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction."

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

"What to do with too much information is the great riddle of our time."

"To have a new vision of the future, it has always first been necessary to have a new vision of the past."

"It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, and to attempt to increase, even by a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world. But it is careless to do so without remembering how previous efforts have failed, and how it has never been possible to predict for certain how a human being will behave. History, with its endless procession of passers-by, most of whose encounters have been missed opportunities, has so far been largely a chronicle of ability gone to waste. But next time two people meet, the result could be different. That is the origin of anxiety, but also of hope, and hope is the origin of humanity."

“Humanity’s pride in being able to communicate better than any other creature is belied by most talk being greeted with silence or incomprehension."

"There's no nation, no democracy which can write its own History without acknowledging a debt or a direct influence to France."

"The wish to live as intensely as possible has subjected humans to the same dilemma as the water flea, which lives 108 days at 8 degrees Celsius, but only twenty-six days at 28 degrees, when its heart beats 15 million times in all. Technology has been a rapid heartbeat, compressing housework, travel, entertainment, squeezing more and more into the allotted span. Nobody expected that it would create the feeling that life moves too fast."