Isaiah Berlin

"Monism in political philosophy is the belief that there is one ultimate value to which all others must submit."

"We are in love with the idea of being in love more often than we are in love."

"The rationalist believes that everything can be solved if we only think hard enough. This is a peculiarly modern kind of madness."

"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. But it helps if they first have a clear idea of what 'good' is."

"Romantic love is one of the great human inventions. It is also one of the most destructive."

"The notion that you can live without values is itself a kind of delusion."

"Wars are not won by those with the greatest conviction, but often by those with the greatest flexibility."

"I believe in trying to understand the views of those with whom I disagree."

"The study of history is not the study of the past, but the study of human possibility."

"To say that something is inevitable is to rob human beings of moral agency."

"Nationalism is the emotion of the nineteenth century. It will pass."

"The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge."

"We spend much of our time lamenting that we cannot change the past, when we might be more productively engaged in building the future."

"Every system of thought contains the seeds of its own contradiction."

"The capacity for hope is the greatest gift a human being can possess."

"Those who insist on certainty in matters of human conduct are often the most dangerous."

"Beauty is not objective, but neither is it merely subjective. It is something more complex and more interesting."

"The idea that you can have absolute justice is the idea that causes the most injustice."

"Literature teaches us that human beings are infinitely various and infinitely contradictory."

"The purpose of thought is not to arrive at answers but to think more clearly about questions."

"I have never been able to understand why people are surprised by human wickedness. We have had ample historical evidence."

"The political ideologist is like a man with a hammer. All problems look like nails."

"To be human is to be caught between competing loyalties and values. This is not a condition to be regretted but accepted."

"The notion that science can answer all human questions is a modern superstition."

"Friendship is the one relationship in which flattery is most accepted and most harmful."

"We are most ourselves when we are reading books by people who lived in very different times."

"The problem with utopias is not that they are wrong, but that they are not concerned with the actual suffering of actual people."

"To understand why someone holds a belief, you must first understand what they stand to lose if that belief is false."

"Knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge of what is worth knowing."

"The greatest cruelty is often done in the name of the greatest good."