Michael Ignatieff
Michael Ignatieff
Michael Grant Ignatieff, PCis a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Toronto...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth12 May 1947
CountryCanada
arena business common contest define life politics ready reality rough ugly winners
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 our common life in a rough and ready contest that has winners and losers.
real war believe
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,
real commitment technology
Tad Homer-Dixon is a rare kind of public intellectual, who combines real expertise with a commitment to communicate to the widest possible readership. In The Ingenuity Gap he wants us all to wake-up to the fearful possibility that our blithe trust in science and technology may be misplaced. Human ingenuity may not be capable of coping with two emerging crises of this century and the next: population growth and environmental despoliation. Read Homer Dixon's wake-up call and you will see the future very differently.
real soldier cost
There's a financial cost, but the only costs that are ever real are the costs of our soldiers.
canadian-politician cost people personal rescue zero
We're going out to rescue people who are being slaughtered or massacred, but we're going to do it at zero personal cost to ourselves.
admire five respect spent united
I spent five years in the United States. I admire and respect American institutions.
men thinkers ways
Thinkers too often disparage men of action in ways that do them no credit.
adopt belief born citizenship democracy freedom histories home hope liberal national particular
Belief in liberal freedom and democracy is always belief in it in a particular place, in a national home with histories that only those who are born in a place or who adopt its citizenship can hope to understand.
crazy drives enormous experience fantastic government senator skills slightly states united
I've always thought Anne-Marie Slaughter would make a fantastic United States Senator or something. She's a real intellectual, but she's got enormous communicative skills and she's got government experience. The thing that drives me slightly crazy is the way we think about intellectuals as wooly, hopeless, arrogant, self-deceived, incapable.
invest learn listen
We have to invest in Saskatchewan and . . . listen to Saskatchewan . . . and learn from Saskatchewan.
appears canadian-politician chief concern giving moral precision weapons
My chief concern about the way we're going is that new technology, precision weapons technology, appears to be giving us a new moral alibi.
founding james laws learned lincoln understood
Lincoln was not an intellectual, but no one in 200 years understood the language of the King James Bible or learned Blackstone's Laws of England, or Cicero, or the language of the Founding Fathers, better than he did.
almost call cry foul politics teams trouble
Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.
allow convert democratic enemies reconcile resort societies speak temptation unlikely
Free societies, which allow differences to speak and be heard, and live by intermarriage, commerce, and free migration, and democratic societies, which convert enemies into adversaries and reconcile differences without resort to violence, are societies in which the genocidal temptation is unlikely and even inconceivable.