Michael Ignatieff National Quotations

Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting.

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.

If we are a national institution, we must as a party reunite in rural and agricultural Canada. We can't be a national institution if we're only going for votes in Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax.

Nationalism could almost be defined as intense national feeling for a country that does not yet exist, or for someone else's country.

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.