Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.
Isaiah BerlinRead
Utopias have their value -- nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities -- but as guides to conduct they can prove literally fatal.
Interpretation
Utopias inspire imagination but should not be strictly followed as they can lead to disastrous outcomes.
Isaiah Berlin highlights the dual nature of utopiasβwhile they serve to broaden human imagination and push the boundaries of what is possible, they can also lead individuals and societies to dangerous paths if pursued as concrete guides for action. The idea is that having lofty ideals is important, but they should not dictate real-world conduct without consideration of practical implications.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a philosophical debate about the role of ideals in society.
Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.
All central beliefs on human matters spring from a personal predicament.
The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.
The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.
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.
Can man, the finite and sinful one, cooperate with God, the Infinite and Holy One? Yes, he can, precisely because God Himself has become man, become body, and here (in the liturgy), again and again, he comes through his body to us who live in the body.
Maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything.
One sometimes feels a guest of one's time and not a member of its household.
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.
Meditate upon the Om that is in the heart.
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