Quotes About Tony Judt

The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people.

True, many radicals of the '60s were quite enthusiastic supporters of imposed choices, but only when these affected distant peoples of whom they knew little.

a political class deeply sensitive to its moral and social responsibilities.

Moreover, it was social democracy and the welfare state that bound the professional and commercial middle classes to liberal institutions in the wake of World War II.

The chief shortcoming of the old public services was the restrictive regulations and facilities—one-size-fits-all—with

Like large-scale state projects elsewhere, the Cassa was inefficient, and more than a little corrupt. Most of its benefits went to the favored coastal regions; much of the new industry that it brought in was capital-intensive and thus created few jobs.

Solidarity was financed largely from the US and it was the US that gave the most insistent official encouragement to protesters in Berlin and elsewhere—once it was clear that they would probably win.

The intellectual case for planning was never very strong. Keynes, as we have seen, regarded economic planning much as he did pure market theory: in order to succeed, both required impossibly perfect data.

For the postwar peace, he preferred to minimize direct government intervention and manipulate the economy through fiscal and other incentives.

Hence the famous bon mot of Lord Ismay, who took up his post as NATO's

The Soviet Party-State acquired a new foundation myth: the Great Patriotic War.