Isaiah BerlinThinkers

The Academic is one who cares more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.

Choice is our fate. We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail irreparable loss.

Exaggeration is often necessary. Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

Freedom is our curse. We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail irreparable loss.

Freedom's fundamental sense is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.

The Human being is a self-transforming being.

Human nature is the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control.

Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

Liberty is always context dependent. What is liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.

Listening is a thing some people can do so intently that they exhaust the speaker.

Negative freedom is freedom from social control. ..

The Philosopher is an adult who persists in asking childish questions.