Isaiah Berlin Quotes

If you convinced me And I convinced you, Would there not still be Two points of view?

But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it The diverse things they see.

Truth is often a multiplicity of perspectives, and sometimes the more viewpoints and versions of events there are, the closer the reader gets to an overarching truth.

Surely one of the most visible lessons taught by the twentieth century has been the existence, not so much of a number of different realities, but of a number of different lenses with which to see the same reality.

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.

We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.

Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.

In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.

The universe would appear to be something like a piece of cheese; it can be sliced in an infinite number of ways- and when one has chosen his own pattern of slicing, he finds that other men's cuts fall at the wrong places.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

Truth is only a question of point of view.

One person's crazy is another person's sane, I guess.

There are as many "real worlds" as there are people!

Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.

When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a different light. There is the life as I see it. as others see it, and as God sees it.

Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.

Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know.

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.

The truth isn't all things to all people all of the time.

Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.

After all, across the population there are slight differences in brain function, and sometimes these translate directly into different ways of experiencing the world. And each individual believes his way is reality.

One must accept the fact that others don’t see what you do.