Isaiah Berlin

"Power, like money, is a good servant but a terrible master."

"The notion that we can separate reason from emotion is a great error in philosophy."

"Adventure is what happens when you stop planning and start living."

"I believe that justice is more important than happiness, and truth more important than either."

"The person who reads is the person who thinks, and the person who thinks is the person who is free."

"Patience is not a virtue of weakness but of strength."

"The greatest impediment to knowledge is the illusion that you already possess it."

"I think what matters most about any idea is not whether it is true, but whether it is interesting."

"The human being is the only animal that asks why. This is both our greatest gift and our greatest curse."

"The only thing that is truly evil is the belief that you are right and everyone else is wrong."

"To understand a man, you must understand his times."

"Liberty is not the absence of all restraint, but restraint by law."

"The greatest threat to human freedom comes from those who are certain they know the truth."

"Compromise is not a betrayal of principles, but a recognition of reality."

"We are made of the choices we make."

"The purpose of history is to understand how we got where we are."

"Beauty consists not in perfect forms but in the struggle and tension between ideals."

"Man cannot live by bread alone, but he cannot live without it either."

"The attempt to create a perfect society is the enemy of a good one."

"Knowledge without humility is merely arrogance."

"We must learn to live with uncertainty rather than flee from it."

"Art is not about perfection—it is about saying something that cannot be said any other way."

"The most dangerous moment is when you stop questioning your own beliefs."

"Education should open minds, not fill them."

"Freedom means nothing if you cannot choose your own path, even the wrong one."

"The greatest intellectual honesty is admitting what you do not know."

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire."

"We cannot understand the past by projecting our values onto it."

"The price of peace is eternal vigilance."

"Happiness comes not from getting what you want but from wanting what you have."