Tony Judt

undergraduate study para-academic ethnic minority ghetto

“Undergraduates today can select from a swathe of identity studies.... The shortcoming of all these para-academic programs is not that they concentrate on a given ethnic or geographical minority; it is that they encourage members of that minority to study themselves - thereby simultaneously negating the goals of a liberal education and reinforcing the sectarian and ghetto mentalities they purport to undermine.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

judical rule legislative good fair right better society world

“We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

unequal fraternity fatuity objective politics

“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 (1948-2010)

moral courage different view irritate reader listener supply

“The moral courage required to hold a different view and to press it upon irritated readers or unsympathetic listeners remains everywhere in short supply.”

― Tony Judt

america government finger economy USA country contrary belief

“Whatever Americans fondly believe, their government has always had its fingers in the economic pie. What distinguishes the USA from every other developed country has been the widespread belief to the contrary.”

― Tony Judt

left voice inequality wealth corruption democracy

“If it is to be taken seriously again, the Left must find its voice. There is much to be angry about: growing inequalities of wealth and opportunity; injustices of class and caste; economic exploitation at home and abroad; corruption and money and privilege occluding the arteries of democracy.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

loss gain nice name

“Loss is loss, and nothing is gained by calling it by a nicer name.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

market trust cooperation action good common competition

“Markets do not automatically generate trust, cooperation or collective action for the common good. Quite the contrary: it is in the nature of economic competition that a participant who breaks the rules will triumph—at least in the short run—over more ethically sensitive competitors.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

disposition disagree reject dissent open society

“But the disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent - however irritating it may be when taken to extremes - is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion. A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

ideology control people inability imagine alternative

“Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

system thought rule control embrace

“ask . . . what it is about all-embracing 'systems' of thought that leads inexorably to all-embracing 'systems' of rule.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

wrong live virtue pursuit material self-interest

“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

left right footing confusion

“Today, neither Left nor Right can find their footing.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

distinguish desirable ends unacceptable means

“We must distinguish better than some of our predecessors between desirable ends and unacceptable means.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

thinking economistically thirty years intrinsic humans

“Thinking ‘economistically’, as we have done now for thirty years, is not intrinsic to humans.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

inequality corrosive rot society

“Inequality is corrosive. It rots societies from within.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

democracy permanent consensus

“A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

closed circle opinion oposition capacity respond challenge

“A closed circle of opinion or ideas into which discontent or opposition is never allowed—or allowed only within circumscribed and stylized limits—loses its capacity to respond energetically or imaginatively to new challenges.”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)

poverty mortality medicine employment increase 1970

“However, poverty—whether measured by infant mortality, life expectancy, access to medicine and regular employment or simple inability to purchase basic necessities—has increased steadily since the 1970s”

― Tony Judt (1948-2010)