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
academic false life merely useless
In academic life, false ideas are merely false, and useless ones can be fun to play with.
canadian-politician peace
I think no one could have made peace in Bosnia besides Holbrooke.
buried canadians cut entire family quebec russian
I am an English-speaking Canadian, but my entire family - Russian exiles and the Canadians they married - is buried in Quebec, and if Quebec were to separate, I would feel I had been cut in two.
charity directions life parade pulled shuttle turn
I had no inkling of how crazy the political life would turn out to be. You shuttle between your constituency and Ottawa, you try to make every barbecue, festival, parade and charity run, but sometimes you feel pulled in 14 directions at once.
aptitude attacks business great political politics took vocation
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.
liberal tribal
I'm not tribal Labour. I'm a Liberal at heart. Different tradition, different language.
best credit game left people played politics predators respect toward worst
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.
people politics
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.
politics
I had a lot of hubris going into politics, but I didn't think I was Pierre Trudeau.
politics
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.
canadian-politician cleansing ethnic intervene stop
If you say that we're going to intervene to stop ethnic cleansing but we're only going to do it at 15,000 feet, you can't actually do it.
I'm a Canadian. I've always been a Canadian.
inspirational teacher fear
Living fearlessly is not the same as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.
memories afterlife forget
Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.