Isaiah Berlin - Notion Quotes

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It is this—the 'positive' conception of liberty: not freedom from, but freedom to—which the adherents of the 'negative' notion represent as being, at times, no better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny.

Isaiah Berlin
The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.

Isaiah Berlin
The notion that one can discover large patterns or regularities in the procession of historical events is naturally attractive to those who are impressed by the success of the natural sciences in classifying, correlating, and above all predicting.

Isaiah Berlin
If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict — and of tragedy — can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition. This gives its value to freedom as Acton conceived of it — as an end in itself, and not as a temporary need, arising out of our confused notions and irrational and disordered lives, a predicament which a panacea could one day put right.

Isaiah Berlin
The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist, seems to me not merely unobtainable—that is a truism—but conceptually incoherent.......Some among the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.

Isaiah Berlin