Isaiah Berlin Quotes
We begin by trying to alter what we can see, but the tremors which our action starts sometimes run through the entire depth our society; levels to which we pay no conscious attention are stirred, and all kinds of unintended results ensue.
Isaiah Berlin, 1909-1997, British Political Philosopher, “On Political Judgment,” The New York Review of Books, October 3, 1996
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In world history man’s actions result in something quite different from what he purposes or intends.
This is an early statement of what is referred to as “the law of unintended consequences.”
This is one of the reasons that many politicians fear reform and change. The process triggers more change that is ever accelerating, rendering anyone impotent to assess the extent, timing and nature. There are inevitable unintended consequences.
Stalin was then only 26 years old. This was more than a decade BEFORE the Russian Revolution and Stalin was a young left wing revolutionary planning how to bring about a revolution and how the society should operate thereafter. He was then much the youthful, intellectual, Georgian idealist.
Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBA was a Latvian-born British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks were sometimes recorded and transcribed, and many of his spoken words were converted into published essays and books, both by himself and by others, especially his principal editor from 1974, Henry Hardy.
