All the best reasons for going into politics never really change: the desire for glory and fame and the chance to do something that really matters, that will make life better for a lot of people. – Michael Ignatieff
When we say, even in a global village, that all politics is local, we mean that national sovereignties are the only reliable source of political authority. – Michael Ignatieff
There’s a financial cost, but the only costs that are ever real are the costs of our soldiers. – Michael Ignatieff
Ultimate authority in a global system remains with sovereigns. Governments will not have it any other way: politicians face instant rejection from their electorate if they allow transnational authorities to dictate terms. – Michael Ignatieff
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, ‘Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach,’ forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books. – Michael Ignatieff
Conservatives believe that international institutions such as the United Nations are anti-American and anti-Israeli cabals. Progressives do not like the economic medicine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank force down the throats of developing countries. – Michael Ignatieff
The war waged against terror since September 11 puts a strain on democracy itself, because it is mostly waged in secret, using means that are at the edge of both law and morality. Yet democracies have shown themselves capable of keeping the secret exercise of power under control. – Michael Ignatieff
Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People’s Republic of China and in Putin’s police state. – Michael Ignatieff
I’m not tribal Labour. I’m a Liberal at heart. Different tradition, different language. – Michael Ignatieff
What’s distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn’t care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn’t worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call ‘the problem of dirty hands.’ – Michael Ignatieff
There are hundreds of thousands of Scots who acknowledge English, Irish or Welsh parts of their very being. Lives and destinies are similarly intertwined in Catalonia and Spain, in Ukraine and Russia. – Michael Ignatieff
I had a lot of hubris going into politics, but I didn’t think I was Pierre Trudeau. – Michael Ignatieff
I went into politics thinking that, if I made arguments in good faith, I’d get a hearing. It’s a reasonable assumption, but it’s wrong. In five and a half years in politics up north, no one really bothered to criticize my ideas, such as they were. It was never my message that was the issue. It was always the messenger. – Michael Ignatieff
Politics is like getting a really bad review: a stinker that you know all your friends are reading. – Michael Ignatieff
The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions – and Iraq may be one of them – when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror. – Michael Ignatieff
America owed its military renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s to Vietnam. Veterans like Norman Schwartzkopf, Colin Powell, Alfred Grey, Charles Krulak, and Wesley Clark returned home angry and ashamed at their defeat and rebuilt all-volunteer, professional armed forces from the ground up. – 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
The wars of the future will be fought by computer technicians and by lawyers and high-altitude specialists, and that may mean war will be increasingly abstract, hard to think about and hard to control. – Michael Ignatieff
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 you mean. – Michael Ignatieff
A good journalist is modest; his only job is simple: to decide what counts as news. – Michael Ignatieff
Secessionists, whether in Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec or anywhere else, invariably assume that a person must either be Scottish or British, Catalan or Spanish, Quebecois or Canadian. What about those who feel they are both? – 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 was with the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the day that Srebrenica fell, which happened to be a huge historical turning point in the Bosnian war. – Michael Ignatieff
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
Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity. Even in times of real danger, political authorities have to prove the case that abridgments of rights are justified. – Michael Ignatieff
