Isaiah Berlin Quotes

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

No matter how bad the individual, everybody has reasons for why they do what they do.

Wisdom is not in words; Wisdom is meaning within words.

The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.

Life comes when you have knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, when you can see for real, touch, and feel for real, know for real. Then you are truly living.

Knowledge is like fire 'cause it breaks down things so you can see what they truly are. It's like how a fire breaks your body down to carbon.

A great soul is called Saragrahi that means one who is always looking for the essence of every situation that comes before us.

Wisdom is a dreadful thing when it brings no knowledge to its possessor.

I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem. We are trying to understand how we have got a complicated world, and we have an explanation in terms of a slightly simpler world, and we explain that in terms of a slightly simpler world and it all hangs together down to an ultimately simple world. Now, God is not an explanation of that kind. God himself cannot be simple if he has power to do all the things he is supposed to do.

Knowledge, idea, belief stands in the way of wisdom.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

Behavior is a symptom. If you look at it like a problem, you're just going to make a judgment. If you look at like a symptom, you can do something about it.

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

There is no result in nature without a cause; understand the cause and you will have no need of the experiment.

We do not know a truth without knowing its cause.

To know, to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic art, of which the best logic's can but babble on the surface.

Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don't ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue.

Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul.

True wisdom consists of tracing effects to their causes.

True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words.

So where are the strongAnd who are the trusted?And where is the harmony?Sweet harmony -'cause each time I feel it slippin away, it just makes me wanna cry:What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?

Any issue, including political, economic and religious activities human beings pursue in this world, should be fully understood before we pass our judgement. Therefore, it is very important to know the causes. Whatever the issue, we should be able to see the complete picture. This will enable us to comprehend the whole story.

Without imagination, there is no goodness, no wisdom.

Knowledge is power." Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.