I was born in 1948, so I'm a '60s kid, and in the '60s everyone talked all the time, endlessly, about socialism versus capitalism, about political choices, ideology, Marxism, revolution, 'the system' and so on. Tony Judt More Quotes by Tony Judt More Quotes From Tony Judt The military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of its totality. Tony Judt independentmilitarysocial We are not merely historians but also and always citizens. Tony Judt historiancitizens The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people. Tony Judt hurtwritingmen 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 fraternityturnspolitical Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives. Tony Judt inabilityalternativespeople As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Tony Judt wealthgovernmentideas All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues. Tony Judt partypresidentpast If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have Tony Judt substitutesifsfall The different American experience of the 20th Century is crucial because the lesson of the century for Europe, which essentially is that the human condition is tragic, led it to have a build a welfare system and a set of laws and social arrangements that are more prophylactic than idealistic. It's not about building perfect futures; it's about preventing terrible pasts. I think that is something that Europeans in the second half of the 20th century knew in their bones and Americans never did, and it's one of the big differences between the two Western cultures. Tony Judt perfectpastthinking Reality is a powerful solvent. Tony Judt powerfulreality Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the US population: 120 million people. Tony Judt homeaveragepeople American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies. Tony Judt degreesgovernmentopposites Yugoslavia served as a reminder that the lessons of World War Two were only partially learned. There's a great line someone wrote in the middle of the 1990s, at the time when Clinton was agonizing about whether or not to go into Bosnia: "Everyone says, 'Never again. Never again.' But all they really mean is never again will Germans kill Jews in the streets of Warsaw". Tony Judt warmeanworld I don't much mind being expelled from communities. Tony Judt communitymind I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action. Tony Judt politicalshould-havebelieve 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. Tony Judt afterlifebelievepeople The rottenness of politics in Yugoslavia didn't come as a surprise. The main lesson is that this is a war which could have easily been stopped by Europe. What was lacking was any will to do so. It's an irony of the achievement of Europe that it had lived for 40 years under the assumption of the unimaginability of internal wars, so it didn't know what to do with it when it was confronted with one close up. Tony Judt ironyachievementwar 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. Tony Judt peopleworldthinking 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. Tony Judt strongviewswriting How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else? Tony Judt wealthobsessedgenerations
