# Quote — Tony Judt, Ill Fares The Land

> Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy—its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom—now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed “a revolt of the spirit against . . . a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism”.

- Author: [Tony Judt](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tony-judt.md)
- Book: [Ill Fares The Land](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tony-judt/ill-fares-the-land.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tony_Judt#Ill_Fares_the_Land_(2010)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/tony-judt/ill-fares-the-land/unfortunately-pragmatism-is-not

## More from this book

> Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tony-judt/ill-fares-the-land/something-is-profoundly.md)

> The ‘false precision’ of which Maynard Keynes accused his economist critics is with us still. Worse: we have smuggled in a misleadingly ‘ethical’ vocabulary to bolster our economic arguments, furnishing us with a self-satisfied gloss upon crassly utilitarian calculations. When imposing welfare cuts on the poor, for example, legislators in the UK and US alike have taken a singular pride in the ‘hard choices’ they have had to make.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tony-judt/ill-fares-the-land/the-false-precision.md)

> The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present—and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/tony-judt/ill-fares-the-land/the-past-was.md)