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.

Isaiah Berlin

Isaiah Berlin

Collective Cured Evils Fighting Goals Ignorance Incompatible Individual Injustice Live May Men Only Positive Poverty Predictable Reform Revolution Seldom Slavery Them Times Variety Vast

Related Quotes

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

— Isaiah Berlin

Religion and slavery are incompatible.

— B. R. Ambedkar

IncompatibleReligionSlavery

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

AboutAppearBarbarians

The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.

— Isaiah Berlin

AbsoluteCertaintiesChildhood

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

— H. L. Mencken

BeliefCollectiveDemocracy