Isaiah Berlin Quotes

There is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man. A close connection between race and personality has never been established.

I don't think human beings have changed in 2,000 years.

The world looks different and is understood differently at every spot on earth. Without accepting this simple truth it is hard for us to grasp the behavior of others, the motives and aims of those actions.

Culture is a part of basic human nature, of deep humanity.

The human animal varies from class to class, culture to culture. In one way we are consistent: We are irrational.

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.

Barbarism is the natural state of mankind.

Therefore, we must not look at the African people, even before they met whites, as if they had something unique, which was not to be found in other societies.

I am ever fascinated by the human experience and by, actually, human beings.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its own ways.

The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes. Perhaps the only real value of history lies in considering this endlessly varied play between the essence and the accidents.

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

Must be yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please.

The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

It's not that big a mystery about types. It's not even that big a mystery why so many people are picking up on things now. It's like we were talking about the primitive thing before and all that. Nothing has really changed much. The things that have changed are like we're on the noon now. There are more buildings now. But we're still basically two monkeys sitting here.

Human nature is deeper and broader than the artificial contrivance of any existing culture.

Look what is happening in the world - we are being conditioned by society, by the culture we live in, and that culture is the product of man. There is nothing holy, or divine, or eternal about culture.

I can't legislate to change human nature.

Culturally, one of the best arguments we can make is, wait and see.

I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.

Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.

Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society

I consider myself something of a self-taught anthropologist.