"I put national unity at the centre of our project as a party and as a people. But it matters not just to us. It matters to the world. This is something I see from afar. From afar, we're a very special and precious experiment. We're an experiment as to whether a multicultural, multilingual society can survive and prosper. If we can't do it, ladies and gentlemen, no one else can. And the future of all multiethnic, multicultural societies will be grim indeed. That's why there's a global stake in us getting this story right.

"We are a ray of light in a gloomy world, a ray of hope in a world which is in fact ravaged by intolerance and by hatred. Let's get it right. The world does look to us, the world does ask us, "get it right, show us how". Communities of difference, communities of different languages can live together, can forge a unity together. You're doing it in this hall tonight but never forget that we truly are a light unto the nations, and we must never forget that in the daily life of our politics.

"Now, there are countries to the south of us that believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And these countries that shall remain nameless want to export freedom and democracy to the world. And because we're Canadians, we're skeptics. We don't like rhetoric that's that high flung. We got some doubts about the project. We have doubts about the American dream. Ok. But let's remember that we have a dream. Because we are the people of peace, order, and good government.

"From Sri Lanka to Iraq, from South Africa to the Ukraine, we can help promote democratic federalism for multiethnic, multilingual states. Exporting peace, order, and good government has to be the core of a Canadian foreign policy, that doesn't try to be everything to everybody, doesn't try to do everything, but focuses on what is the unique achievement of this federation, on our national history together. That's the story we want to sell and promote to the world. If we're divided, we have no dream to share. If we're fragmented, we have no story to tell. But united, believe me, we will be a light unto the nations, and a beacon unto the world."

-- Michael Ignatieff, "Speech to the Convention of the Liberal Party of Canada", March 3, 2005

"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or smooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they support them, or they totally destroy them."

-- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

"What, then, is truth? A movable army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation, and decoration, and which, after they have been in use for a long time, strike a people as firmly established, canonical, and binding; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensual vigour, coins which, having lost their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer as coins."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense

"At intimate suppers, on hunts, in conversations between two or three men, matters of state of the most vital importance are decided. Meetings of party forums, conferences of the government and assemblies, serve no purpose but to make declarations and put in an appearance."

-- Milovan Djilas, The New Class

"Whatever interests and concerns us puts itself in the place of what is strange and uninteresting. After-images of earlier thoughts trouble new perceptions."

-- Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis

"At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven. At sixty, I heard them with docile ear. At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right."

-- Confucius, The Analects

They tell me everything is gonna be alright,
but I don't know what alright even means.

-- Bob Dylan, "Tryin' To Get To Heaven", Time Out of Mind (album)