Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? Tony Judt More Quotes by Tony Judt More Quotes From Tony Judt The 60s were a continuation of the 50s much more than people realized. Certainly in some countries, like Britain, there was still a culture of deference, whereas in the 70s we really are in a time of angry transition. The generation that came into young adulthood in the 70s couldn't find jobs; that wasn't true in my generation. They entered a time when two depressing things hit them both at the same time. Tony Judt depressing country people History always happens to us and nothing ever stays the same. Tony Judt happens We need to learn... how war brutalises and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonise our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance. Tony Judt war order enemy I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception. Tony Judt grew social world My generation those who were students in the late 60s was always, in the words of the Who, talking about our generation. That's what we thought of ourselves, as the most important thing since sliced bread. And the "we" that we meant was really the Western Europeans and American generation. And as I think back I suppose I have a sense of guilt on behalf of my generation, a sense that we were terribly provincial and didn't understand the really important stuff that was going on in Eastern Europe. Tony Judt guilt important thinking I know exactly how and where I am going to die. The only question is when. Tony Judt dies knows 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 ive-learned people thinking I've lost count of the interviews I've done about my illness and its relationship to my ideas and writing. Tony Judt done writing ideas It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel. Tony Judt commentators israel doe The pleasures of mental agility are much overstated, inevitably - as it now appears to me - by those not exclusively dependent upon them. Tony Judt agility dependent pleasure My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books. Tony Judt reading writing book 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 optimism running long Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life. Tony Judt trump lines israel The Second World War had a precipitating effect in that it discredited the empires, as well as bankrupting them. Not only could you no longer, if you were a colonial subject of France in Africa, look to France as a model of power and influence and civility after what had happened in the war. Nor could the French any longer afford to run their empire. And nor could the British, although they were not discredited in the way that the French were. Tony Judt running war world At a certain point, to remain slightly tangential to wherever I was became a way of 'being Tony': by not being anything that everyone else was. Tony Judt certain way 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. Tony Judt opportunity talking needs It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck. To fall prey to a motor neuron disease is surely to have offended the Gods at some point, and there is nothing more to be said. But if you must suffer thus, better to have a well-stocked head. Tony Judt healthy men fall 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. Tony Judt different together men I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 1980s, and it was not until 1993 that I published my first piece in the 'New York Review.' Tony Judt pieces new-york book Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over. Tony Judt illness subjects masters
