Biography

Isaiah Berlin was born on June 6, 1909 in Riga, Russian Empire [now Latvia]. He died on November 5, 1997 in Oxford, England, UK.

He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 1957 for his services and contribution to scholar and philosophy.

He was once invited to lunch by Winston Churchill, who was under the impression that he was Irving Berlin.

He was a philosopher.

He was awarded the OM (Order of Merit) for his services to philosophy.

He allegedly declined the British honor of life peerage in 1980.

[observation, 1934] I do think that the Palestine Jews are the happiest and securest people I have ever met. I don't feel absolute kinship, alas, but if I lived there for a bit I am sure I should.

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.

Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

Libery for wolves is death to the lambs.

Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.