Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBAwas a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas. He was an essayist, conversationalist, raconteur, and lecturer. In its obituary of the scholar, the Independent stated that "Isaiah Berlin was often described, especially in his old age, by means of superlatives: the world's greatest talker, the century's most inspired reader, one of the finest minds of our time... there is no doubt that he showed in more than one direction the unexpectedly...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth6 June 1909
CountryRussian Federation
The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.
Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.
Lenin could listen so intently that he exhausted the speaker.
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.
The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist, seems to me not merely unobtainable--that is a truism--but conceptually incoherent. ......Some among the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.
Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.
The trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.
Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.
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.
Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience.
We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail irreparable loss.
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.
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.
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.