Tony Judt Quote

In the eyes of Hayek and his contemporaries, the European tragedy had thus been brought about by the shortcomings of the Left: first through its inability to achieve its objectives and then thanks to its failure to withstand the challenge from the Right. Each of them, albeit in different ways, arrived at the same conclusion: the best—indeed the only—way to defend liberalism and an open society was to keep the state out of economic life.

Tony Judt

In the eyes of Hayek and his contemporaries, the European tragedy had thus been brought about by the shortcomings of the Left: first through its inability to achieve its objectives and then thanks to its failure to withstand the challenge from the Right. Each of them, albeit in different ways, arrived at the same conclusion: the best—indeed the only—way to defend liberalism and an open society was to keep the state out of economic life.

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About Tony Judt

Tony Robert Judt ( JUT; 2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) was an English historian, essayist and university professor who specialised in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University and director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute. He was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. In 1996 Judt was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.