Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so?

I think if I'm controversial it's not because I set out to be. It's because I've never felt comfortable being part of someone else's mainstream community.

I went to live on a kibbutz, and I'd idealized the world of collective, agrarian work, where everyone was equal, everyone contributed, that all this awful European intellectual stuff just fell away.

Tony Judt Quotes