Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.
Tony JudtRead
Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over.
Interpretation
Words have the power to help us understand and gain control over difficult emotions.
In this quote, Tony Judt expresses the idea that by articulating our experiences and emotions through words, we can better comprehend and manage challenging situations, such as illness. Rather than letting illness define us or overwhelm us emotionally, we can use language as a tool to create distance and mastery over our feelings, transforming them into something we can discuss and reflect upon thoughtfully.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of expressing feelings.
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
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.
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.
I don't think I had even begun to have an idea where I was going, but wherever it was, that was where I wanted to go.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
America is a young country with an old mentality.
An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.
I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.
The only thing that really matters is that there be an action of goodness, love and intelligence in living. Is goodness individual or collective, is love personal or impersonal, is intelligence yours, mine or somebody else? If it is yours or mine then it is not intelligence, or love, or goodness. If goodness is an affair of the individual or of the collective, according to one's particular preference or decision, then it is no longer goodness.
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