Michael Ignatieff Politics Quotations

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.

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.

Politics is like getting a really bad review: a stinker that you know all your friends are reading.

Politics is intensely physical: your hands touch, clasp and hold, and your eyes are always reaching for contact. None of this came naturally to me. I'd always put my trust in words and let the words do the work, but in politics, the real message is physical.

Politics is a tough game. But would I change places with a trauma nurse in an emergency ward on a busy Saturday night? No way. There are lots of jobs in the world that are tougher than politics. And politicians and people who've done it need to remember that.

I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Carlos Fuentes in Mexico - but I knew that many of them had failed, and in any event, I wasn't exactly in their league.

I am fighting to revive faith, not just in the Liberal party, but in politics itself. I'm a devoted Liberal, I've been one all my life. That's why I'm in the fight to renew the party I love. All my life has been inspired by Canada, and now it's my turn to try and inspire my fellow Canadians.

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.

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.

Affirming belief that America is an exceptional nation has become a test of patriotism in American politics.

I had the vocation for politics. What I didn't have was any aptitude for political combat. I took the attacks personally, which is a great mistake. It's never personal: It's just business. It was ever thus.

I may have come into politics with an unacknowledged condescension toward the game and the people who played it, but I left with more respect for politicians than when I went in. The worst of them - the careerists and predators - you find in all professions. The best of them were a credit to democracy.

If the only people who can succeed in politics are people who go in at 25, that'd be too bad. That'd be a shame.

I had a lot of hubris going into politics, but I didn't think I was Pierre Trudeau.

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.

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.