life-decisions-upon-external-forces-whatever-kind-instrument-mens-acts-subject

I wish my life and decisions to depend upon myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not other men's, acts of will. I wish to be the subject, not an object...I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer - deciding, not being decided for, slef-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them.

Isaiah Berlin
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Isaiah Berlin's Popular Quotes

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 the…

- Isaiah Berlin

Science cannot destroy the consciousness of freedom, without which there is no morality and no art, but it can refute it.

- Isaiah Berlin

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

- Isaiah Berlin

To understand is to perceive patterns.

- Isaiah Berlin

True knowledge is knowledge of why things are as they are, and not merely what they are.

- Isaiah Berlin

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positiv…

- Isaiah Berlin

Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.

- Isaiah Berlin

The trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.

- 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 inalienable ingredient in wha…

- Isaiah Berlin
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