Michael Ignatieff

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.

Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting.

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.

Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.

Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.

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.

How do you keep war accountable to the American people when war becomes invisible and virtual?

Cynics who say power is all that counts in politics forget that power without ideas is just improvisation.

Living fearlessly is not the same as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.

...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.