Quote

If we remain grotesquely unequal, we shall lose all sense of fraternity: and fraternity, for all its fatuity as a political objective, turns out to be the necessary condition of politics itself.

Tony Judt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tony Judt
Age: 62 †
Born: 1948
Born: January 2
Died: 2010
Died: August 6
Essayist
Historian
Non-Fiction Writer
Professor
Teacher
London
England
Tony Robert Judt
Sense
Remain
Political
Necessary
Conditions
Grotesquely
Lose
Unequal
Loses
Fraternity
Shall
Objective
Politics
Objectives
Turns
Condition

More quotes by Tony Judt

Image
Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.
Tony Judt
Image
As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge.
Tony Judt
Image
At a certain point, to remain slightly tangential to wherever I was became a way of 'being Tony': by not being anything that everyone else was.
Tony Judt
Image
The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.
Tony Judt
Image
We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.
Tony Judt
Image
Social democracy does not represent an ideal future it does not even represent the ideal past.
Tony Judt
Image
I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself.
Tony Judt
Image
We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them.
Tony Judt
Image
Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.
Tony Judt
Image
It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.
Tony Judt
Image
My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.
Tony Judt
Image
But I'm English. We don't do uplifting.
Tony Judt
Image
The military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of its totality.
Tony Judt
Image
I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.
Tony Judt
Image
I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.
Tony Judt
Image
If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants
Tony Judt
Image
Israel today is bad for the Jews.
Tony Judt
Image
I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.
Tony Judt
Image
We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.
Tony Judt
Image
Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives.
Tony Judt