“For the postwar peace, he preferred to minimize direct government intervention and manipulate the economy through fiscal and other incentives.” — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues. — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“two world wars had habituated almost everyone to the inevitability of government intervention in daily life.” — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“Whatever Americans fondly believe, their government has always had its fingers in the economic pie. What distinguishes the USA from every other… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“The only thing worse than too much government is too little: in failed states, people suffer at least as much violence and… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
If we remain grotesquely unequal, we shall lose all sense of fraternity: and fraternity, for all its fatuity as a political objective,… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
The rottenness of politics in Yugoslavia didn't come as a surprise. The main lesson is that this is a war which could… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“We should by now have learned that politics remains national, even if economics does not: the history of the 20th century offers… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“From the late 19th century until the 1970s, the advanced societies of the West were all becoming less unequal. Thanks to progressive… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
Social democrats are characteristically modest - a political quality whose virtues are overestimated. We need to apologise a little less for our… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“For three decades following the war, economists, politicians, commentators and citizens all agreed that high public expenditure, administered by local or national… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“Familiarity reduces insecurity, so we feel more comfortable describing and combating the risks we think we understand: terrorists, immigrants, job loss or… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“And yet, for all its faults as a system of indirect government, the Union has certain interesting and original attributes. Decisions and… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“This reduction of 'society' to a thin membrane of interactions between private individuals is presented today as the ambition of libertarians and… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
“We no longer have political movement. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together… — Tony Judt Copy Share Image
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… — Tony Judt Copy Share
“Markets do not automatically generate trust, cooperation or collective action for the common good. Quite the contrary: it is in the nature of economic… — Tony Judt Copy Share
“ Lieux de memoire . . . 'exist because there are no longer any milieux de memoire , settings in which memory is a… — Tony Judt Copy Share
“Keynes died in 1946, exhausted by his wartime efforts. But he had long since demonstrated that neither capitalism nor liberalism would survive very long… — Tony Judt Copy Share
The Second World War had a precipitating effect in that it discredited the empires, as well as bankrupting them. Not only could you no… — Tony Judt Copy Share
“That the state might exceed its remit and damage the market by distorting its operations was not taken very seriously in these years.” — Tony Judt Copy Share
“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.… — Tony Judt Copy Share
I think if I'm controversial it's not because I set out to be. It's because I've never felt comfortable being part of someone else's… — Tony Judt Copy Share
“This reduction of 'society' to a thin membrane of interactions between private individuals is presented today as the ambition of libertarians and free marketeers.… — Tony Judt Copy Share
“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material… — Tony Judt Copy Share
We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us… — Tony Judt Copy Share
“What did trust, cooperation, progressive taxation and the interventionist state bequeath to western societies in the decades following 1945? The short answer is, in… — Tony Judt Copy Share
Healthcare reform is a paradigmatic case. It is self-evidently necessary and inevitable and has been on the agenda for 35 years, and the political… — Tony Judt Copy Share
