Chains Quote by Isaiah Berlin

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

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

— Isaiah Berlin

“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

Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.

— Isaiah Berlin

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing completely straight was ever made

— Isaiah Berlin

Utopias have their value -- nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities -- but as guides to conduct they can prove…

— Isaiah Berlin

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

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

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

“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

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