“ If politi-cians—however well-intentioned—were barred from planning, manipulating, or directing the affairs of their fellow citizens, then extremists of Right and Left alike would be kept at bay. Tony Judt
“ Here, it was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of conservatives felt emboldened to challenge the ‘statism’ of their predecessors and offer radical prescriptions for dealing with what they… Tony Judt
“ Financial transactions have displaced the production of goods or services as the source of private fortunes, distorting the value we place upon different kinds of economic activity. Tony Judt
“ Dialectics, as a veteran communist explained . . . 'is the art and technique of always landing on your feet. Tony Judt
“ What did trust, cooperation, progressive taxation and the interventionist state bequeath to western societies in the decades following 1945? The short answer is, in varying degrees, security, prosperi… Tony Judt
“ This reduction of 'society' to a thin membrane of interactions between private individuals is presented today as the ambition of libertarians and free marketeers. But we should never forget that it wa… Tony Judt
“ This cohort of politicians have in common the enthusiasm that they fail to inspire in the electors of their respective countries. They do not seem to believe very firmly in any coherent set of princip… Tony Judt
“ The priorities of the traditional state were defense, public order, the prevention of epidemics and the aversion of mass discontent. But following World War II, and peaking around 1980, social expendi… Tony Judt
“ The idea that those in authority know best—that they are engaged in social engineering on behalf of people who do not understand what is good for them—was not born in 1945, but it flourished in the de… Tony Judt
“ Rilke’s admonition: love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish. As Tony Judt
“ Ovšem psát a vyjadřovat se s plným vědomím o svém omezeném vlivu je u intelektuálů, alespoň podle prvního zdání, výjimečně bezúčelný podnik – a přitom je to to nejlepší, v co můžeme doufat. Tony Judt
“ Overtaken by demographic transformation and two generations of socio-geographic mobility, France’s once-seamless history seemed set to disappear from national memory altogether.The anxiety of loss had… Tony Judt
“ Motor scooters appeared on the scene—in France and especially Italy, where the first national motor-scooter rally, held in Rome on November 13th 1949, was followed by an explosive growth in the market… Tony Judt
“ Many of its cities—particularly the smaller ones at the intersection of old and new imperial boundaries, such as Trieste, Sarajevo, Salonika, Cernovitz, Odessa or Vilna—were truly multicultural societ… Tony Judt
“ Keynes died in 1946, exhausted by his wartime labors. But he had long since demonstrated that neither capitalism nor liberalism would survive very long without one another. And since the experience of… Tony Judt
“ Keynes died in 1946, exhausted by his wartime efforts. But he had long since demonstrated that neither capitalism nor liberalism would survive very long without one another. And since the experience o… Tony Judt
“ It is perhaps worth noting here that even Hayek cannot be held responsible for the ideological simplifications of his acolytes. Like Keynes, he regarded economics as an interpretive science, not amena… Tony Judt
“ In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent wh… Tony Judt
“ 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
