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

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

I can't think of this country without Quebec. Je parle francais. And when I think about being a Canadian, speaking French is part of it.

Michael Ignatieff

Secessionists, whether in Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec or anywhere else, invariably assume that a person must either be Scottish or British, Catalan or Spanish, Quebecois or Canadian. What about those who feel they are both?

Michael Ignatieff

When we say, even in a global village, that all politics is local, we mean that national sovereignties are the only reliable source of political authority.

Michael Ignatieff