Quotes by Michael Ignatieff

“a theater of displacement, in which political energies that might otherwise have been expended in defending multiethnic society at home were directed instead at defending mythic multiculturalism far away. Bosnia became the latest bel espoir of a generation that had tried ecology, socialism, and civil rights only to watch all these lose their romantic momentum.”

“I remember the intellectual fashion for American decline in the 1970s. There was the stunning defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam , rioting in Detroit and Newark that suggested the social fabric was coming apart, talk of Rust Belt America unable to compete with the Japanese, and a sense the Russian bear was on the march.”

“Id be wary of writing this country off. There are some scary and ugly things about it, but it remains a turbulently, explosively innovative place.”

“I remember the intellectual fashion for American decline in the 1970s, ... There was the stunning defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam , rioting in Detroit and Newark that suggested the social fabric was coming apart, talk of Rust Belt America unable to compete with the Japanese, and a sense the Russian bear was on the march.”

“You cant spend your whole life teaching people about public service without finally thinking that you should put your money where your mouth is.”

“Canadians want a country. They dont want a community of communities. Im committed to the national unity of the country.”

“I dont think youll have to wait long. Im not in a Hamlet-like state of indecision.”

“I spent five years in the United States. I admire and respect American institutions.”

“I am fighting to revive faith, not just in the Liberal party, but in politics itself. Im a devoted Liberal, Ive been one all my life. Thats why Im in the fight to renew the party I love. All my life has been inspired by Canada, and now its my turn to try and inspire my fellow Canadians.”

“None of us, none of us are going to run against each other. All of us are running against Stephen Harpers vision of Canada.”

Intolerance is a form of divided consciousness in which abstract, conceptual, ideological hatred vanquishes concrete, real and individual moments of identification.

...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.

Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.

An ethnic minority can live in peace with an ethnic majority as long as the majority does not use its preponderance to turn the institutions of the state into an instrument of ethnic favoritism or ethnic justice.

One of the greatest feelings in life is the conviction that you have lived the life you wanted to live-with the rough and the smooth, the good and the bad-but yours, shaped by your own choices, and not someone elses.

I teach students that what people say about failure in politics is mostly wrong. People always told me, Theyll praise you on your way up and kick you on your way down. That wasnt my experience. I cant walk down the street in Toronto without someone coming up and saying hello.

Theres intense national feeling in America that could be called patriotism.

Since Franklin Roosevelts leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them while seeking, by hook or by crook, to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.

Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics - one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.

Patriotism is the secret resource of a successful society.