A Quote by Michael Ignatieff

For someone like me who, as a kid, walked to school muttering little political speeches to myself, it was irresistible to finally get a chance at political life for real. When the people of Etobicoke-Lakeshore elected me their MP, it changed me forever.
There's a lot of trainers in my career, between Terry Taylor and Arn Anderson, who've always told me to keep my damn feet on the ring mat, and there's just that little kid in me - I may be 45, but there's that little kid in me that, if I get a chance to do some flying, I'm gonna do it.
My whole life growing up, both my parents told me not to swear like a sailor. After college, I recall there was finally a time where I swore, and neither one of them was correcting me, and I felt so relieved. I thought, finally; I can finally be myself and not get yelled at.
If you were to ask any children of any politician, when you've been part of a political life, you are not on the sidelines. There is no such thing as a member of a political family who is only a spectator. You see the wheeling and the dealing. That doesn't intimidate me. I'll do a little of that myself, on behalf of my constituents.
My daughter has changed me. She has made me grow up quicker because I don't just have a kid, I have a baby girl. She has made me more patient. I am actually soft when I get around her. I don't think she changed me as a fighter, but she has changed me as a person. She has helped me mature.
Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.
We have to fundamentally change the way people are elected to political office in this country, as well as the types of people that are going into political office. It's dysfunctional because people on each side are only talking to themselves - they're not talking to each other and that is a function of how they get elected.
I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what's going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.
The weave of the personal and the political finally proves as irresistible as it is moving, partly because it has been drawn from extraordinary life.
If you won’t marry me for the sake of your own honor, then do it for the sake of everyone who would have to tolerate me otherwise. Marry me because I need someone who will help me to laugh at myself. Because someone has to teach me how to whistle. Marry me, Lillian… because I have the most irresistible fascination for your ears.
My life hasn't changed that much. Sure, people recognize me, and airports can get tough, but the people who stop me tend to be real nice.
People are hungry for someone who is real. They are hungry for something that is not the same plastic nonsense that has cause us to have such little respect for our political process and our political officials.
Music, to me, was - is - representative of everything I like most in life. It's beautiful and fun, but very rigorous. If you wanted to be good you had to work like crazy. It was a real relationship between effort and reward. My musical life experiences were just as important to me, in terms of forming my development, as my political experiences or my academic life.
I have no political ax to grind; I just find it absurd that huge billion-dollar corporations can take over elections. I just find it insane that, for instance, we give tax breaks to people like myself making millions of dollars, while there're no tax breaks for working people. That, to me, is not a political issue, that's a life issue.
I remember being a young black kid in high school, I didn't think the establishment or the political system was for me. I didn't think the system was for me, and I know a lot of kids feel that way.
For me, what is political is very personal. Politics are not this abstract idea. Laws are the rules that dictate how we live our lives. What we eat is political. How we dress is political. Where we live is political. All of these things are influenced by political decision-making, and it's important to be part of the process.
I'm stunned at the amount of young women who get in touch with me every single day, trying to become somebody like me. As a teenager, I would never have done that. And I was someone who was interested in politics. But I wouldn't have emailed the local MP.
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