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Timothy Garton Ash Biography

Timothy Garton Ash

Timothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA (born 12 July 1955) is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe.

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Timothy Garton Ash Quotes

Europe's biggest problem is its success.

Biggest, Europe, Problem, Success

The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.

Keys, Liberty, Modern, Multiple, Survival

America is replicated at every level of British life, from the taxi driver to the prime minister.

America, Level, Levels, Prime, Taxi

The whole project of European Union is one in deep trouble.

Project, Projects, Trouble, Union, Unions, Whole

Every step that produces a single job for a currently unemployed European should be taken. Every centimetre of red tape that puts someone out of work must be torn up.

Jobs, Single, Step, Taken, Tape, Work

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy.

Compromise, Democratic, Messy, Transition, Violence

The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public?

Cabinets, Interest, Justly, Lines, Mistress, Tension

If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you.

Continent, Democracy, Portugal, Ruins, War

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.

Certainty, Kind, Past, Response, Violence

Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.

Common, Crude, Distinguishing, Obsession, Stereotyping, United States

A central claim of the Bush administration's foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism.

Administration, Bush, Claim, Cure, Democracy, Middle East

I'm a historian by training and by conviction. And so the thing that has throughout informed my thinking about international relations is history. I think, for example, the reason that I was perhaps able to see sooner than some others that the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe was decaying--if not disintegrating--was that I came to it through history and through Germany, rather than through Sovietology and through Moscow. And therefore the starting point was that no empire in history has lasted forever, and this one won't either.

Empire, Europe, Forever, Soviet, Thinking, Throughout

Nuclear proliferation - the proliferation of WMDs altogether - is one of the greatest dangers of our time.

Altogether, Danger, Nuclear, Proliferation, Wmd, Wmds

What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it. . . Karl Marx would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps not, since some of his writings eerily foreshadowed our era of globalised capitalism. His prescription failed but his description was prescient.

Chinese, Elephant, Elephants, Era, Indians, Writing

After saying yes to Turkey, the EU is having difficulty finding clear and consistent grounds for saying no to other, still more remote candidates - but being in the general vicinity of Europe does seem to be a continuing requirement.

Europe, General, Remote, Saying Yes, Turkeys, Vicinity

The Eurozone has clearly gone spectacularly wrong, pulling down all the continental economies.

Continental, Economy, Gone, Pulling, Wrong

The first job of the historian and of the journalist is to find facts. Not the only job, perhaps not the most important, but the first. Facts are the cobblestones from which we build roads of analysis, mosaic tiles that we fit together to compose pictures of past and present. There will be disagreement about where the road leads and what reality or truth is revealed by the mosaic picture. The facts themselves must be checked against all the available evidence. But some are round and hard--and the most powerful leaders in the world can trip over them. So can writers, dissidents and saints.

Against, Jobs, Powerful, Reality, Revealed, Truth

Developments in information technology and globalised media mean that the most powerful military in the history of the world can lose a war, not on the battlefield of dust and blood, but on the battlefield of world opinion.

History, Mean, Military, Powerful, War

So what were Europeans telling their leaders? The general message was perfectly summed up by the cartoonist Chappatte, who drew a group of protesters holding up a placard shouting "Unhappy" - and one of their number shouting through a megaphone into the ballot box. There are 28 member states and 28 varieties of Unhappy.

Holding, Leader, Numbers, States, Unhappy

To be in Florence is to reflect on Europe's intricate diversity - and its lost creativity.

Creativity, Diversity, Europe, Florence, Intricate

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