158 Quotes by Tony Judt

Without idealism, politics is reduced to a form of social accounting, the day-to-day administration of men and things. This too is something that a conservative can survive well enough. But for the Left it is a catastrophe.

The Socialist social contract was tartly summed up in the popular joke: ‘you pretend to work, we pretend to pay you’. Many workers, especially the less-skilled, had a stake in these arrangements, which – in return for political quiescence – offered social security and a low level of pressure at the workplace. As East Germany’s official Small Political Dictionary put it, with unintended irony, ‘in socialism, the contradiction between work and free time, typical of capitalism, is removed.’ The.

I do think we’re on the edge of a terrifying world, and that many young people know that but don’t know how to talk about it.

Selfishness is uncomfortable even for the selfish. Hence the rise of gated communities: the privileged don’t like to be reminded of their privileges – if these carry morally dubious connotations.

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.

Why does this matter? Because – as the Greeks knew – participation in the way you are governed not only heightens a collective sense of responsibility for the things government does, it also keeps our rulers honest and holds authoritarian excess at bay.

But precisely because history is not foreordained, we mere mortals must invent it as we go along – and in circumstances, as old Marx rightly pointed out, not entirely of our own making. We shall have to ask the perennial questions again, but be open to different answers.

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.

War, in short, concentrated the mind. It had proven possible to convert a whole country into a war machine around a war economy; why then, people asked, could something similar not be accomplished in pursuit of peace? There was no convincing answer.