List of Isaiah Berlin Quotes

The Case Against The Notion Of Historical Objectivity Is Like The Case Against International Law, Or International Morality; That It Does Not Exist.

The Desire Not To Be Impinged Upon, To Be Left To Oneself, Has Been The Markof High Civilisation Both On The Part Of Individuals And Communities.

Liberty For Wolves Is Death To The Lambs.

The History Of Society Is The History Of The Inventive Labors That Man Alter Man, Alter His Desires, Habits, Outlook, Relationships Both To Other Men And To Physical Nature, With Which Man Is In Perpetual Physical And Technological Metabolism.

The Most Passionate, Consistent, Extreme And Implacable Enemy Of The Enlightenment And ... All Forms Of Rationalism ... Was Johann Georg Hamann. His Influence, Direct And Indirect, Upon The Romantic Revolt Against Universalism And Scientific Method ... Was Considerable And Perhaps Crucial.

The Underlying Assumption That Human Nature Is Basically The Same At All Times, Everywhere, And Obeys Eternal Laws Beyond Human Control, Is A Conception That Only A Handful Of Bold Thinkers Have Dared To Question.

Lenin Could Listen So Intently That He Exhausted The Speaker.

Life May Be Seen Through Many Windows, None Of Them Necessarily Clear Or Opaque, Less Or More Distorting Than Any Of The Others.

Conformities Are Called For Much More Eagerly Today Than Yesterday... Skeptics, Liberals, Individuals With A Taste For Private Life And Their Own Inner Standards Of Behavior, Are Objects Of Fear And Derision And Targets Of Persecution For Either Side... In The Great Ideological Wars Of Our Time.

The Fundamental Sense Of Freedom Is Freedom From Chains, From Imprisonment, From Enslavement By Others. The Rest Is Extension Of This Sense, Or Else Metaphor.

One Must Look At What Impiety Hates, What Puts It In A Rage, What It Attacks Always, Everywhere, And With Fury - That Will Be The Truth.

Science Cannot Destroy The Consciousness Of Freedom, Without Which There Is No Morality And No Art, But It Can Refute It.