Quotes by Michael Ignatieff - Page 3 | QuoteForever

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The Only cure for nihilism is for liberal democratic societies - their electorates, their judiciary, and their political leadership- to insist that force is legitimate only to the degree that it serves defensible poltical goals. Thus implies a constant exercise of due diligence.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Exercise
Goal
Political
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The war waged against terror since September 11 puts a strain on democracy itself, because it is mostly waged in secret, using means that are at the edge of both law and morality. Yet democracies have shown themselves capable of keeping the secret exercise of power under control.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Capable
Morality
September
Strain
Terror
War Power Democracy
Edge
Puts
Shown
Waged
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I teach students that what people say about failure in politics is mostly wrong. People always told me, 'They'll praise you on your way up and kick you on your way down.' That wasn't my experience. I can't walk down the street in Toronto without someone coming up and saying hello.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Failure
Hello
People
Praise
Saying Hello
Teach
Toronto
Street
Mostly
People Say
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America owed its military renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s to Vietnam. Veterans like Norman Schwartzkopf, Colin Powell, Alfred Grey, Charles Krulak, and Wesley Clark returned home angry and ashamed at their defeat and rebuilt all-volunteer, professional armed forces from the ground up.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
America
Angry
Armed Forces
Ashamed
Defeat
Grey
Military
Renaissance
Vietnam
Armed
Charles
Clark
Colin
Colin Powell
Forces
Norman
Owed
Professional
Rebuilt
Returned
Veterans
Vietnam Veterans
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The legitimacy of coercive acts in a democracy arises from the process by which they are justified and by the degree to which we regard decisions as rational. If the justifications proceed properly, through recognized public institutions, and if they make sense to us, they are legitimate.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Justified
Legitimacy
Rational
Regard
Acts
Arises
Coercive
Proceed
Properly
Recognized
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Since Franklin Roosevelt's 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.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Leadership
American Citizens
Application
Citizens
Franklin
Hook
Institutions
Nations
Nuremberg
Seeking
Setting
Trials
United Nations
Actual
Crook
Enforce
Exempt
Norms
Promoted
Roosevelt
Soldiers
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Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Desert
International
Legitimacy
Storm
Vietnam
Warfare
American Way
Coalition
Domestic
Pattern
Prevailed
Unilateral
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What's distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn't care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn't worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call 'the problem of dirty hands.'
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Evil
Problem
Public Good
Shocking
Unconcerned
Worry
Believed
Call
Public
Politicians
In Other Words
Machiavelli
Thinkers
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Liberals don't want any part of Canada left behind. I used to give speeches on and on and on about the fact that we don't want to have a country where you think, "my kids have got to move to the city if they're going to have any kind of future." We've been saying that, and we've not got through.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Kids
Country
Moving
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I may have come into politics with an unacknowledged condescension toward the game and the people who played it, but I left with more respect for politicians than when I went in. The worst of them - the careerists and predators - you find in all professions. The best of them were a credit to democracy.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Credit
Politicians
Predators
Professions
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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.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Society
Truth
Crisis
Differences
Form
Genocide
Land
Madness
Multicultural
Multicultural Society
Political
Remains
Temptation
Utopia
Just
More
Politics Society Political
Since
Any
End
Beyond
Deeply
Difference
Enduring
Promises
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The core of human rights work is naming and shaming those who commit abuses, and pressuring governments to put the screws to abusing states. As a result, human rights conventions are unique among international law instruments in depending for their enforcement mostly on the activism of a global civil society movement.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Society
Abuse
Activism
Civil Society
Commit
Conventions
Core
Enforcement
Human Rights
Instruments
International
International Law
Rights
States
Unique
Among
Civil
Depending
Global
Governments
Put
Mostly
Naming
Result
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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.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Imagination
Cruelty
Figures
General Public
Genocide
Ignored
Moral
Raphael
Revolt
Unending
Western
Achievements
General
Enduring
Word
Whose
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I went into politics thinking that, if I made arguments in good faith, I'd get a hearing. It's a reasonable assumption, but it's wrong. In five and a half years in politics up north, no one really bothered to criticize my ideas, such as they were. It was never my message that was the issue. It was always the messenger.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Assumption
Bothered
Criticize
Good Faith
Hearing
Reasonable
Faith Politics Good
Politics Faith Good
Half Years
Messenger
North
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What everybody forgets is that when I was a journalist in Britain and in the United States, I was always a Canadian. And the price of expatriation does not go down, it goes up. I never felt part of the political common sense of Britain. I never felt it in the United States. I had no natural home in Britain and the U.S.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Britain
Common Sense
Forgets
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Free societies, which allow differences to speak and be heard, and live by intermarriage, commerce, and free migration, and democratic societies, which convert enemies into adversaries and reconcile differences without resort to violence, are societies in which the genocidal temptation is unlikely and even inconceivable.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Adversaries
Commerce
Differences
Migration
Reconcile
Temptation
Unlikely
Convert
Democratic Societies
Enemies
Free Societies
Inconceivable
Societies
Resort
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Desert Storm was seen by the military establishment and by some politicians as avenging Vietnam, but it left behind dangerous illusions. The victory was so decisive, and information about it so carefully managed, that the American public was never clearly informed that it was purchased at the price of approximately 100,000 Iraqi lives.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Desert
Establishment
Military
Storm
Vietnam
American Public
Approximately
Carefully
Clearly
Decisive
Politicians
Illusions
Informed
Iraqi
Price
Purchased
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It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians with his speech in London at the Palace of Westminster in 1982, which led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy and the emergence of democracy promotion as a central goal of United States foreign policy.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Democracy
Goal
Speech
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I've always thought Anne-Marie Slaughter would make a fantastic United States Senator or something. She's a real intellectual, but she's got enormous communicative skills and she's got government experience. The thing that drives me slightly crazy is the way we think about intellectuals as wooly, hopeless, arrogant, self-deceived, incapable.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Arrogant
Enormous
Hopeless
Incapable
Skills
Slaughter
Communicative
Senator
Drives
Intellectuals
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There are a lot of young Canadians who want to be politically active at their college or their university who can't go to the party convention, who can't take part in politics, because they're holding down a job to pay their tuition. These are kids who want to do public service, who want to get involved politically, but their financial situation is precarious.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Jobs
Kids
Party
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The Conservatives hold rural places because they keep bombarding rural Canada with, "Liberals are a bunch of urban, metropolitan snobs who don't care about you and want to leave you dead by the roadside." We've simply got to go out and say, "they're lying to you about us. We actually care about you more than the other guys, and we're not going to pander to your prejudices - we're going to give hope to your kids."
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Kids
Giving
Lying
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We can't afford to waste people. We can't afford to have people think the game is over before it's begun. We've got to be saying to the Canadian people: you can't tax cut your way to a productive 21st-century economy. You can talk that talk, but it's not going to give you a productive 21st-century economy, because it will scythe apart the public goods that make prosperity possible. That's what we've got to say, and so we shall.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Cutting
Games
Thinking
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Tad Homer-Dixon is a rare kind of public intellectual, who combines real expertise with a commitment to communicate to the widest possible readership. In The Ingenuity Gap he wants us all to wake-up to the fearful possibility that our blithe trust in science and technology may be misplaced. Human ingenuity may not be capable of coping with two emerging crises of this century and the next: population growth and environmental despoliation. Read Homer Dixon's wake-up call and you will see the future very differently.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
Technology
Commitment
Real
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In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual's responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician's responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm. Michael Ignatieff, a former professor at Harvard and contributing writer for the magazine, is a member of Canada's Parliament and deputy leader of the Liberal Party.
Michael Ignatieff / Member Of The Canadian House Of Commons
War
Fun
Party
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