Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I had the vocation for politics. What I didn't have was any aptitude for political combat. I took the attacks personally, which… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
For someone like me who, as a kid, walked to school muttering little political speeches to myself, it was irresistible to finally… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I had no inkling of how crazy the political life would turn out to be. You shuttle between your constituency and Ottawa,… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Public service does not necessarily mean service in the House of Commons, and public service is not synonymous with partisan political activity.… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity.… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics - one people,… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
What everybody forgets is that when I was a journalist in Britain and in the United States, I was always a Canadian.… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
One of the biggest divides in Canada - I said it in 2006, and I said it right through my political career… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
The Only cure for nihilism is for liberal democratic societies - their electorates, their judiciary, and their political leadership- to insist that… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
When we say, even in a global village, that all politics is local, we mean that national sovereignties are the only reliable… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
There are all kinds of different forms of public service, but there's no form of public service that can make more difference… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
No kid graduating in a political science class in Canada should not understand what's happened to income inequality since the 1970s, period.… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
The Only cure for nihilism is for liberal democratic societies - their electorates, their judiciary, and their political leadership- to insist that force is… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
What really matters is getting new people in. The constitutional changes matter, but the thing that the party mustn't do is turn in on… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
The medium's gaze is brief, intense, and promiscuous. The shelf life of the moral causes it makes its own is brutally short. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
There are lots of nations in the world or national peoples who don't yet have states. They're inside someone else's state and they want… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
There's a civic nationalism in Britain and dozens of other countries. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Affirming belief that America is an exceptional nation has become a test of patriotism in American politics. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
The legitimacy of coercive acts in a democracy arises from the process by which they are justified and by the degree to which we… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Some of our finest leaders were not intellectuals at all, and I admire them enormously because they weren't. Harry Truman wasn't. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
If you get the access to see history happen, do you understand the history when it does happen? And the answer to that question… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I have been a journalist, off and on, since I was 17. I was a copy boy for the 'New York Times,' when it… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
