A Quote by Tony Judt

If we have learned nothing else from the 20th century, we should at least have grasped that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences. Incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek.

Tony Judt

Quote Topics

Answer Best Century Circumstances Consequences Else Hope Incremental Learned Least More Nothing Perfect Seek Should Terrifying

Quote Author

Tony Judt
British - Historian
January 2, 1948 - August 6, 2010

To change your circumstances, first start thinking differently. Do not passively accept unsatisfactory circumstances, but form a picture in your mind of circumstances as they should be. Believe and succeed.

Norman Vincent Peale

More than anything else we should be concerned about meekness, or our standing in God's sight. If that standing is as it should be, nothing else matters. If it is not, nothing else counts.

John H. Groberg

More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.

Nicholas D. Kristof

It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe: indeed, if one may say so, we should do nothing else besides.

Gregory of Nazianzus

When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do. Well, that's a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once. We should know what you meant.

Eric Schmidt

The different American experience of the 20th Century is crucial because the lesson of the century for Europe, which essentially is that the human condition is tragic, led it to have a build a welfare system and a set of laws and social arrangements that are more prophylactic than idealistic. It's not about building perfect futures; it's about preventing terrible pasts. I think that is something that Europeans in the second half of the 20th century knew in their bones and Americans never did, and it's one of the big differences between the two Western cultures.

Tony Judt

The more you prune a plant, the more it grows. So too the more you seek to annihilate the ego, the more it will increase. You should seek the root of the ego and destroy it.

Ramana Maharshi

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

Peter Singer

I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more utopian ideas in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Not only were the ideas so extreme, but surprising people were adopting them.

Christine Jennings

As far as leftists are concerned, nobody should have to pay more than anybody else. Nobody should make more than anybody else. Everything is supposed to be the same. It's the only way it's fair. It's the only way feelings don't get hurt. So when circumstances like that exist, they call that anti-competitive. Anti-competitive means they can't afford it.

Rush Limbaugh

... The person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another ... No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.

Mortimer Adler

The best product should be bought, the best man should be rewarded more. Interfering factors which befuddle this triumph of virtue, justice, truth, and efficiency, etc., should be kept to an absolute minimum or should approach zero as a limit.

Abraham Maslow

What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century.

Bertrand Piccard

The 21st century is significantly different from the 20th century. The old models will not hold anymore. More and more, we are one people on Earth. We need to share our problems.

Haris Pasovic

I have lived under the threat of death for a year now. And because of that, I have made choices. Listen to me. I alone should suffer the consequences of those choices, no one else. And those consequences, they're coming. No more prolonging the inevitable.