A Quote by Michael Ignatieff

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

Quote Topics

Adversaries Allow Commerce Convert Democratic Differences Enemies Even Free Heard Inconceivable Intermarriage Live Live By Migration Reconcile Resort Societies Speak Temptation Unlikely Violence Which Without

Quote Author

Michael Ignatieff
Canadian - Politician
Born: May 12, 1947

I think that in free societies, and we're constantly talking about living in free societies, aren't we, in contradiction with unhappy people who live in non-free societies, that the benefit, the dividend of living in a free society is that you say what you think.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

George W. Bush

Honesty . . . is the foundation upon which relationships and many societies are built. Without it . . . there can be no trust. Widespread lying destroys the fabric of democratic societies, in which the necessary assumption is that people mostly tell the truth.

Janny Scott

Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.

Natan Sharansky

We see that there are two different kinds of...societies: (a) parasitic societies and (b) producing societies. The former are those which live from hunting, fishing, or merely gleaning. By their economic activities they do not increase, but rather decrease, the amount of wealth in the world. The second kind of societies, producing societies, live by agricultural and pastoral activities. By these activities they seek to increase the amount of wealth in the world.

Carroll Quigley

In a cross-cultural study of 173 societies (by Herbert Barry and L. M. Paxson of the University of Pittsburgh) 76 societies typically had mother and infant sharing a bed; in 42 societies they shared a room but not a bed; and in the remaining 55 societies they shared a room with a bed unspecified. There were no societies in which infants routinely slept in a separate room.

Melvin Konner

In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.

Michael Novak

Societies that exclude the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully to what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).

Jonathan Haidt

A social problem is one that concerns the way in which people live together in one society. A racial problem is a problem which confronts two different races who live in two separate societies, even if those societies are side by side.

Pauline Hanson

Wars produce warlike societies, which in turn make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves.

Barbara Ehrenreich

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

Natan Sharansky

The broadest pattern of history - namely, the differences between human societies on different continents - seems to me to be attributable to differences among continental environments, and not to biological differences among peoples themselves.

Jared Diamond

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.

Salman Rushdie

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

Ruth Benedict

Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.