Michael Ignatieff

Well, I'm an absolute fan of lacy lingerie. I want to make that perfectly clear.

— Michael Ignatieff

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

— Michael Ignatieff

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

— Michael Ignatieff

If I am not elected, I imagine that I will ask Harvard to let me back.

— Michael Ignatieff

“It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.”

— Michael Ignatieff

We wanted this war and now we've got it, and I'm not sure that we know what to do with it.

— Michael Ignatieff

I think no one could have made peace in Bosnia besides Holbrooke.

— Michael Ignatieff

In academic life, false ideas are merely false, and useless ones can be fun to play with.

— Michael Ignatieff

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

— Michael Ignatieff

The Liberal Party of Canada has no monopoly on public service, we have no monopoly on virtue, and we have no monopoly…

— Michael Ignatieff

“Because we remain a land of hope and opportunity, and new Canadians see in our unfinished destiny an image of their own…

— Michael Ignatieff

I don't want to be someone sitting in my rocking chair at the end saying, 'Well, I passed.' My mum used to…

— Michael Ignatieff

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order.

— Michael Ignatieff

Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists…

— Michael Ignatieff

There are hundreds of thousands of Scots who acknowledge English, Irish or Welsh parts of their very being. Lives and destinies are…

— Michael Ignatieff

I am an English-speaking Canadian, but my entire family - Russian exiles and the Canadians they married - is buried in Quebec,…

— Michael Ignatieff

For someone like me who, as a kid, walked to school muttering little political speeches to myself, it was irresistible to finally…

— Michael Ignatieff

The legitimacy of coercive acts in a democracy arises from the process by which they are justified and by the degree to…

— Michael Ignatieff

Politics is intensely physical: your hands touch, clasp and hold, and your eyes are always reaching for contact. None of this came…

— Michael Ignatieff

Desert Storm was seen by the military establishment and by some politicians as avenging Vietnam, but it left behind dangerous illusions. The…

— Michael Ignatieff

Secessionists, whether in Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec or anywhere else, invariably assume that a person must either be Scottish or British, Catalan or…

— Michael Ignatieff

I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, Vaclav Havel in the…

— Michael Ignatieff

The party's got to see itself as being one public service organization in a very competitive field, all of whom are competing…

— Michael Ignatieff

Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity.…

— Michael Ignatieff

A good journalist is modest; his only job is simple: to decide what counts as news.

— Michael Ignatieff

There's intense national feeling in America that could be called patriotism.

— Michael Ignatieff

I'm not tribal Labour. I'm a Liberal at heart. Different tradition, different language.

— Michael Ignatieff

It's good for people to believe in causes larger than themselves.

— Michael Ignatieff

Thinkers too often disparage men of action in ways that do them no credit.

— Michael Ignatieff

...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.

— Michael Ignatieff

They [Afghans] understand the difficult truth that their best hope of freedom lies in a temporary experience of imperial rule.

— Michael Ignatieff

Canadians want a country. They don't want a community of communities. I'm committed to the national unity of the country.

— Michael Ignatieff

If you get the access to see history happen, do you understand the history when it does happen? And the answer to…

— Michael Ignatieff

“She painted because she loved to paint. She never exhibited. She had no career, no ambitions for her work except that it…

— Michael Ignatieff

Patriotism is strong nationalistic feeling for a country whose borders and whose legitimacy and whose ethnic composition is taken for granted.

— Michael Ignatieff

Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to…

— Michael Ignatieff

When we say, even in a global village, that all politics is local, we mean that national sovereignties are the only reliable…

— Michael Ignatieff

I was with the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the day that Srebrenica fell, which happened to be a huge historical turning…

— Michael Ignatieff

All the best reasons for going into politics never really change: the desire for glory and fame and the chance to do…

— Michael Ignatieff

An intellectual may be interested in ideas and policies for their own sake, but a politician's interest is exclusively in the question…

— Michael Ignatieff