Isaiah Berlin Quotes

I'm a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours.

They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.

I have one abiding religion-human liberty.

I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.

Would you rather be right or free?

Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.

From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty

Liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.

Argentina wouldn't exist if not for self-determination, and this can't be valid for some but not for others.

Moral principles of liberty that endow a person with the right to claim and acquire property at the same time oblige that person to respect every other person’s equal right to do the same.

Liberty is not collective. It is personal.

For why should my freedom be judged by another’s conscience?

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

Civil liberty is the power of a civil society or state to govern itself by its own discretion or by laws of its own making, without being subject to the impositions of any power in appointing and directing which the collective body of the people have no concern and over which they have no control

The individual is greater than the state.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

Here everyone is his own master. Civil liberty places all inhabitants on an equal footing. The humble cannot be oppressed by the mighty, nor the poor by the rich.

You either respect people's liberties, or you don't.

It really is this: you are either for liberty, you're for freedom, and you're for living how you want to live without infringing and impugning on anyone else's rights, or you want the state to deal with everything.

Freedom is our birthright.

If two people want to get married, it’s their prerogative - we hope. Everybody should be able to do what they want to do and be in the pursuit of happiness.

Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity.

Freedom does not mean being free of something, but to be free to do something.

Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.