Tony Judt Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

“I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.”

“I've lost count of the interviews I've done about my illness and its relationship to my ideas and writing.”

“My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.”

“Reality is a powerful solvent.”

“When you are in my classroom, you get everything from me. But you bloody well better give everything too.”

“Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over.”

“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 mainstream community.”

“I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.”

“I went to live on a kibbutz, and I'd idealized the world of collective, agrarian work, where everyone was equal, everyone contributed, that all this awful European intellectual stuff just fell away.”

“I would say that I have become more radical as I have gotten older. I started out very radical when I was young, like most people, but I became less actively politically engaged in the middle of my life.”