"The simple point which I am concerned to make is that where ultimate values are irreconcilable, clear-cut solutions cannot, in principle, be found. To decide rationally in such situations is to decide in the light of general ideals, the overall pattern of life pursued by a man or a group or a society."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: Isaiah Berlin

• "All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will ..."
• "Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save ..."
• "For all his sense of history, his large, untroubled, easy-going style of life, his unshakable ..."
• "Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men ..."
• "Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs. "
• "Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be ..."
• "Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions. "
• "The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds. "
• "The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. ..."
• "The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and... all forms of ..."
• "The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective ..."
• "There exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a ..."
• "To understand is to perceive patterns. "