Like sailors, we cannot change the weather or the direction of the win — Bob Rae

"We do not yet have a politics that is equal to the economics around us."

"Constitutions do not emerge perfectly formed from the brain of the philosopher king, as Mr. Trudeau himself discovered in 1980 and 1981. They are always messy processes that are easier to knock down or tear apart than they are to construct."

"Hezbollah has hugely populated that area, not only with people, but also with underground tunnels, with all the other activities that we associate with them, and with rocket launching facilities, and so on. So I don’t think anybody thinks that the 21-day ceasefire line, if you like, is going to be the line that will ultimately be acceptable to Israel. But we do need to figure out how to get the parties to a table and to begin to get serious efforts at mediation underway,” Rae said."

"As I grow older, I have had to discard some ideas and policies because they no longer make sense. This strikes me as entirely healthy. I would invite others to do the same."

"The premise of neo-conservatives is that markets left to their own devices will produce the best possible result, and that political interference is not required. This defies the human reality that people are not commodities, and simply refuse to behave as if they were."

"The idea of politics is in need of defence."