Theodore Zeldin
Theodore Zeldin
Theodore Zeldinis an Oxford scholar and thinker whose books have searched for answers to three questions. Where can a person look to find more inspiring ways of spending each day and each year? What ambitions remain unexplored, beyond happiness, prosperity, faith, love, technology or therapy? What role could there be for individuals with independent minds, or who feel isolated or different, or misfits? Each of Zeldin’s books illuminates from a different angle what people can do today that they...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth22 August 1933
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.
Nothing influences our ability to cope with the difficulties of our existence so much as the context in which we view them; the more contexts we can choose between, the less do the difficulties appear to be inevitable and insurmountable.
The French have made conversation their claim to civilisation.
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.
One of the great ambitions is to discover the diversity of the world, to discover who inhabits the world.
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.
Brilliant lecturers shouldn't be wasted in lecture rooms: they should appear onTV. We need black market universities, in which people just help each other, and which don't leave out the poor.
The great attraction of fashion is that it diverted attention from the insoluble problems of beauty and provided an easy way -- which money could buy... to a simply stated, easily reproduced ideal of beauty, however temporary that ideal.
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.
Never before have humans been so ambitious, have they thought that they could be much more than their parents were.
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.
The great thing about marriage is that it creates trust, the most precious of things.
People are going to be living quite soon for 100 years. Our idea of how a family works no longer applies. It's no good saying you're going to have children for 15 years and then you're going to retire and have hobbies, because you've got 40 more years to go after 60 and you're in good health until 90 or something.
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.