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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

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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
Shall
Objective
Politics
Objectives
Turns
Condition
Sense
Remain
Political
Necessary
Conditions
Grotesquely
Lose
Unequal
Loses
Fraternity

More quotes by Tony Judt

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What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.
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There were various different keys in which European history had tended to be written. One is the lyrical key, the idea that somehow, in Bretton-Woods in 1945, a bunch of well-intentioned men got together and said, This can't go on let's build a European Union. And it just wasn't like that.
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It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.
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I don't much mind being expelled from communities.
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The military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of its totality.
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If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have
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We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.
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History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.
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Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life.
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Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives.
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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.
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My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.
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We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.
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Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.
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Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.
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After 1945 what happened was rather the opposite: with one major exception boundaries stayed broadly intact and people were moved instead.
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But I'm English. We don't do uplifting.
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Israel today is bad for the Jews.
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I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.
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I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.
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