Michael Ignatieff Good Quotations

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

A good journalist is modest; his only job is simple: to decide what counts as news.

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.

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.'

Your generation and mine have had very little real experience; we've been severed from the direct experience of war by some very good things. By the end of the draft, and by the defeat in Vietnam.

The ultimate good in a liberal state is liberty.