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. Isaiah Berlin
To understand is to perceive patterns. 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
But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you – the social reformers – see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them. Isaiah Berlin
The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds. 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 an unalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human. 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 is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate. Isaiah Berlin