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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.

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
Holds
Alternatives
Ideology
Imagine
Thrall
Best
Inability
People
Measured
Collectives
Collective

More quotes by Tony Judt

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Social democracy does not represent an ideal future it does not even represent the ideal past.
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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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We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.
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Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over.
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I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views.
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Reality is a powerful solvent.
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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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I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.
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It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.
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I've lost count of the interviews I've done about my illness and its relationship to my ideas and writing.
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History always happens to us and nothing ever stays the same.
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Judaism for me is a sensibility of collective self-questioning and uncomfortable truth-telling. I feel a debt of responsibility to this past. It is why I am Jewish.
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But I'm English. We don't do uplifting.
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If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants
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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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I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.
Tony Judt
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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.
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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
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If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have
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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