Isaiah Berlin

To be a human being is to be a being with a point of view: we are never able to look at the world sub specie aeternitatis; our knowledge is, of necessity, finite, relative, and coloured by our own experience and attitudes.

The desire for liberty has been, for some, the desire for self-direction, for self-mastery, for self-realization, for the absence of external obstacles, for the absence of interference, for the absence of coercion, for the absence of restraint.

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

Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

The pursuit of the ideal is a permanent source of human discord.

We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.

The world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute, the realization of some of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others.

Pluralism, with the implication of the acceptance of the existence of a variety of ultimate values, is, for me, a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek in the great systems or in the sciences a single, all-embracing answer.

The belief that there is a single answer to all human problems, a single truth, a single path to salvation, is the root of all fanaticism.

The search for perfect solutions is a recipe for disaster.

Political liberty is not merely the absence of coercion, but the presence of conditions that enable individuals to pursue their own ends.

The history of thought is a history of the clash of ideas, of systems, of values.

The notion of a perfect society, in which all values are harmoniously realized, is a chimera.

The essence of human freedom is the freedom to choose, and to choose between conflicting ends.

The greatest crimes are committed not by those who are driven by passion, but by those who are convinced of their own righteousness.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

The function of a political philosopher is to clarify the issues, not to solve them.

The ultimate value is not the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but the greatest freedom of the greatest number.

The desire to belong, to be part of a larger whole, is a powerful human impulse.