Michael Ignatieff Quotes

The Congress is a power-oriented party.

The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Politics is about winning. If you don't win, you don't get to put your principles into practice. Therefore, find a way to win, or sit the battle out.

It is the steady abuse of power in other governments which renders that of opposition always the popular party.

For the politician the goal is always to be in the government.... Everything is about the struggle for office. The purpose of power, the problem to solve, is forgotten.

Nobody builds a permanent majority in politics, if they did It wouldn’t be politics.

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

I am for the Party that is out of Power

Democratic politics—that is modern mass politics—is a battlefield in which the most important move is that which decides what the battle is about, what the issue is.

The class struggle does not permit supporting any governmental initiative or sharing in political power.

Men and not measures are, no doubt, the very life of politics. But then it is not the fashion to say so in public places.

I didn't have any idea what politics was like. I was surprised at how difficult it is to get something done. In the private world, if I have an idea, I just do it.

If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade... a real change-maker represents a real threat. So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two-dimensional; they're easy to absorb.

The CPI need not worry about the BJP, which is working for people's betterment, or its coalition. Let the CPI realise that it is part of a very weak coalition.

Political books are so often written from the perspective of the politicians, not from the point of view of the people.

The government is what you've got. Politics is what you want.

If India is computer, Congress is its default program.

Do you believe this is simply trickle-down Machiavellianism in much the same way that Communism trickled down as an aberration of its original intent?

The more people in need, the better the Democrat Party is, in their minds, 'cause that's their source of power.

As the longest serving Independent in the history of the United States Congress, as somebody who came into office by defeating an incumbent Democratic mayor in Burlington, Vermont, I know something about third party politics. And I respect Jill [Stein].

Isn't it just heart-stopping and mind-numbing when you stop and realize that the Republican Party doesn't want to win?

Anybody who is an ambitious politician would never ever aspire to a Vice Presidency. And yet, people find themselves in that position, and so, therein lies the rub.

I encourage all my colleagues to run for office themselves. But it has become extremely difficult in this system to become a prominent opposition politician. I no longer have any rivals to have a debate with. I need competition. And the people will soon tire of me. They say: Navalny, It's always just Navalny. We want to see someone new.

Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.