Category - Michael Ignatieff

Discover the thoughtful Quotes of Michael Ignatieff, a philosopher and author. Our collection of his most impactful quotes reflects his deep understanding of language, philosophy, and history. Motivational Quotes of Michael Ignatieff
Whether seeking thought-provoking reflections or academic wisdom, Michael Ignatieffs words offer a rich source of intellectual inspiration. #MichaelIgnatieff Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

I don’t want to be someone sitting in my rocking chair at the end saying, ‘Well, I passed.’ My mum used to say life isn’t for sissies.

– Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

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

– Michael Ignatieff

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

Michael Ignatieff

Loving a country is an act of the imagination.

– Michael Ignatieff

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

Michael Ignatieff

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.

– Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

An intellectual may be interested in ideas and policies for their own sake, but a politician’s interest is exclusively in the question of whether an idea’s time has come.

– Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

– Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

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.

– Michael Ignatieff

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

Michael Ignatieff

What makes the United Nations an appropriate source of legitimacy for intervention is that it is the only place where the claims of the strong are put through the test of justification in front of the weak.

– Michael Ignatieff

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

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