Public service does not necessarily mean service in the House of Commons, and public service is not synonymous with partisan political activity. It comes in a thousand colours, but the common denominator is: it's not about me - it's about we.

There's a civic nationalism in Britain and dozens of other countries.

If I am not elected, I imagine that I will ask Harvard to let me back.

Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish.

Cynics who say power is all that counts in politics forget that power without ideas is just improvisation.

Patriotism is strong nationalistic feeling for a country whose borders and whose legitimacy and whose ethnic composition is taken for granted.

The Conservatives hold rural places because they keep bombarding rural Canada with, "Liberals are a bunch of urban, metropolitan snobs who don't care about you and want to leave you dead by the roadside." We've simply got to go out and say, "they're lying to you about us. We actually care about you more than the other guys, and we're not going to pander to your prejudices - we're going to give hope to your kids."