Michael Ignatieff Quotes

We're awash in toxic memes right now. One of the most toxic, I think because it enables so many others, is the idea that truth doesn't matter, that truth is just relative, that there's no such thing as establishing the truth of anything. Your truth, my truth, we're all entitled to our own truths. That's pernicious, it's attractive to many people, and it is used to exploit people in all sorts of nefarious ways. The truth really does matter.

People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it's good for our ideological investment.

Most elected officials cling to their ideological biases, despite the real-world facts that disprove their theories time and again. Most have no common sense, and most never acknowledge that they were wrong.

But what if...what if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn’t even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.

I'm an educator, and I'm a scientist, and I speak what is objectively true. And if that offends you, I can try to have a conversation with you to ask why it offends you, and tell you why objective truth should not offend you because that's how the world works.

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating - is this the exact right mix? I think that's - to me it's anti-comedy. It's more about PC-nonsense.

Belief is a very peculiar thing: we tend to put more store in a belief we like than a fact we hate.

It's a dumb question, because I don't look at things as a black director, just as a director, so ask me as a director first and we can segue into the colour thing later.

Our great cultural error is to assume that 'truth' arrives only through reductive theories.

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'

Men are not necessarily more zealous for truth than they are for error.

The Republicans love the truth, but they hate facts.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.

The greatest obstacle to discovering the truth is being convinced that you already know it.

Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.

Now is the time for everyone who believes in the rule of reason to speak up against pathological science and its purveyors.

Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.

If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that when the truth comes and knocks on our door, we won't want to let it in.

To avoid being drawn into error, keep a firm grip on the truth.

Bias, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. Facts are your firewall against bias.