Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.
Tony JudtRead
Obviously a primary liberal conviction is that we should be tolerant of other peoples' convictions. But if we believe in something, we had better find ways to say so convincingly.
Interpretation
Tolerating different beliefs is essential, but we must also express our own convictions clearly.
In this quote, Tony Judt emphasizes the importance of tolerance towards others' beliefs while also advocating for the necessity of articulating and defending one's own convictions. He suggests that merely accepting differing viewpoints is not enough; instead, we should strive to communicate our beliefs effectively and compellingly.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the importance of free speech.
Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.
If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants
Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past.
What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.
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.
We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.
For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame.
According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already.
In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.
Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience.
There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, and sand eddies in a whirlwind.
In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: Ever drifting down the stream- Lingering in the golden gleam- Life, what is it but a dream?
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