Quote

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.

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
Default
Conditions
Beneficial
Either
Optimism
Running
Condition
Else
False
Wells
Historical
Trajectories
Well
Tend
Characteristically
Long
Trajectory
Things
Notion

More quotes by Tony Judt

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If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have
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Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.
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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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It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.
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The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.
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Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life.
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Social democracy does not represent an ideal future it does not even represent the ideal past.
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We need to start talking about inequality again we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.
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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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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.
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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 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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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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