No perfect solution is, not merely in practice, but in principle, possible in human affairs, and any determined attempt to produce it is likely to lead to suffering, disillusionment and failure. — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
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… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience. — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
“The world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are faced by choices equally absolute, the realisation of some of… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
The history of society is the history of the inventive labors that man alter man, alter his desires, habits, outlook, relationships both to other… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing completely straight was ever made — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
Utopias have their value -- nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities -- but as guides to conduct they can prove… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist. — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
“True pluralism, as Berlin understands it, is much more tough-minded and intellectually bold: it rejects the view that all conflicts of values can be… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
Liberty and equality, spontaneity and security, happiness and knowledge, mercy and justice - all these are ultimate human values, sought for themselves alone; yet… — Isaiah Berlin Copy Share Image
