Cynics who say power is all that counts in politics forget that power without ideas is just improvisation. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish. — 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
Politics is like getting a really bad review: a stinker that you know all your friends are reading. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I had a lot of hubris going into politics, but I didn't think I was Pierre Trudeau. — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
If the only people who can succeed in politics are people who go in at 25, that'd be too bad. That'd be… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
In politics, there's a kind of literal-mindedness. It's what you say, not what you mean, and you have to say only what… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I've been both a journalist and a politician, and I can tell you it is more fun to ask the questions than… — 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
I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, Vaclav Havel in the… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I'm very struck by what you can do in a classroom. I've got 200 students. You don't do partisan politics in a… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
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 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
Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Ultimate authority in a global system remains with sovereigns. Governments will not have it any other way: politicians face instant rejection from… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Desert Storm was seen by the military establishment and by some politicians as avenging Vietnam, but it left behind dangerous illusions. The… — 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
The core of human rights work is naming and shaming those who commit abuses, and pressuring governments to put the screws to… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
There are a lot of young Canadians who want to be politically active at their college or their university who can't go… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians with his speech in London at… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I may have come into politics with an unacknowledged condescension toward the game and the people who played it, but I left… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
Politics isn't a reality show or a gong show. It's not show business for ugly people. It's the arena where we define… — 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
Politics is intensely physical: your hands touch, clasp and hold, and your eyes are always reaching for contact. None of this came… — 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
All the best reasons for going into politics never really change: the desire for glory and fame and the chance to do… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
The politics of personal destruction, the politics of division, the politics of fear, it's all there. It helps you to define the… — 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
I teach students that what people say about failure in politics is mostly wrong. People always told me, 'They'll praise you on… — Michael Ignatieff Copy Share Image
I went into politics thinking that, if I made arguments in good faith, I'd get a hearing. It's a reasonable assumption, but… — 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
Politics is a tough game. But would I change places with a trauma nurse in an emergency ward on a busy Saturday… — 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
