“ When the Red Army finally reached central Europe, its exhausted soldiers encountered another world. The contrast between Russia and the West was always great—Czar Alexander I had long ago regretted al… Tony Judt
“ Whatever their other differences, French Gaullists, Christian Democrats and Socialists shared a common faith in the activist state, economic planning and large-scale public investment. Much the same w… Tony Judt
“ Western intellectual enthusiasm for Communism tended to peak not in times of ‘goulash Communism’ or ‘Socialism with a human face’, but rather at the moments of the regime’s worst cruelties: 1935–39 an… Tony Judt
“ We no longer have political movement. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such inte… Tony Judt
“ The likely consequences of this coming age of uncertainty—when a growing number of people will have good reason to fear job loss and long-term redundancy—will be a return to dependency upon the state. Tony Judt
“ Marxism was the rhetorical awning under which very different dissenting styles could be gathered together—not least because it offered an illusory continuity with an earlier radical generation. But un… Tony Judt
“ However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it. Tony Judt
“ Familiarity reduces insecurity, so we feel more comfortable describing and combating the risks we think we understand: terrorists, immigrants, job loss or crime. But the true sources of insecurity in… Tony Judt
“ Conservatism—not to mention the ideological Right—was a minority preference in the decades following World War II. Tony Judt
“ By the late ’60s, the culture gap separating young people from their parents was perhaps greater than at any point since the early 19th century. Tony Judt
“ By the late 1960s, the idea that nanny knows best was already starting to produce a backlash. Tony Judt
“ 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… Tony Judt
“ Beneficiaries of the welfare states whose institutions they call into question, they are all Thatcher’s children: politicians who have overseen a retreat from the ambitions of their predecessors. Tony Judt
“ And once we cease to value the public over the private, surely we shall come in time to have difficulty seeing just why we should value law (the public good par excellence) over force. Tony Judt
“ All collective undertakings require trust. From the games that children play to complex social institutions, humans cannot work together unless they suspend their judgments of one another. Tony Judt
“ After Greece, Portugal, rural Spain, southern Italy, and the former Communist Länder of Germany, the UK in 2000 was the largest beneficiary of European Union structural funds—which is a way of saying… Tony Judt
“ Above all, the new Left—and its overwhelmingly youthful constituency—rejected the inherited collectivism of its predecessor. Tony Judt
“ Otherwise—to deny distinctions of class or wealth or influence—is just a way to promote one set of interests above another. Tony Judt
