Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.
It would be suicide in the American academy to show too early an interest beyond your doctoral specialization: charges of everything from charlatanry to ambition would be levied and tenure denied. I've seen this first-hand.
Interpretation
What this quote means
In academia, showing interests outside of your specialization can harm your career prospects.
Tony Judt's quote highlights the restrictive nature of the American academic system, where academics are often discouraged from exploring interests beyond their specific area of expertise. This confinement can lead to fears of being accused of inauthenticity or excessive ambition, ultimately impacting one's chances for tenure and recognition. Judt emphasizes the detrimental effects this culture can have on intellectual curiosity and holistic scholarship.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a keynote speech at a university conference, one might reference this quote to discuss the importance of interdisciplinary studies.
More from Tony Judt
All quotes →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.
Similar quotes
In order to learn, one must change one's mind.
My mother was a schoolteacher and very, very encouraging. She understood what it meant when I said I wanted to be a writer; both me and my brother wrote.
We are human behind and this part of our human nature that we don't learn the importance of anything until it's snatched from our hands. In Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, and that time I realized that education is very important, and education is the power for women. And that's why the terrorists are afraid of education. They do not want women to get education because then women will become more powerful.
Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.
I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.
I write not only what I want to read...I write all the things I should have been able to read.