Michael Ignatieff Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“Conservatives believe that international institutions such as the United Nations are anti-American and anti-Israeli cabals. Progressives do not like the economic medicine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank force down the throats of developing countries.”

“If the history of the western moral imagination is the story of an enduring and unending revolt against human cruelty, there are few more consequential figures than Raphael Lemkin - and few whose achievements have been more ignored by the general public. It was he who coined the word 'genocide.' He was also its victim.”

“There's intense national feeling in America that could be called patriotism.”

“Patriotism is strong nationalistic feeling for a country whose borders and whose legitimacy and whose ethnic composition is taken for granted.”

“What we want is to become masters in our own house.”

“There are lots of nations in the world or national peoples who don't yet have states. They're inside someone else's state and they want a state of their own.”

“Patriotism is the secret resource of a successful society.”

“'Scar Tissue' is the only book I've ever written when I've felt completely toxic, ill.”

“Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.”