Isaiah Berlin — Russian Philosopher born on June 06, 1909, died on November 05, 1997

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBA was a Russo-British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas, widely considered to be the dominant scholar of his generation. He excelled as an essayist, conversationalist and raconteur, and was a brilliant lecturer who spontaneously improvised richly allusive and coherently structured material. In its obituary of the scholar, the Independent stated that "Isaiah Berlin was often described, especially in his old age, by means of superlatives: the world's greatest talker, the century's most inspired reader, one of the finest minds of our time... there is no doubt that he showed in more than one direction the unexpectedly large possibilities open to us at the top end of the range of human potential"... (wikipedia)

Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.
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.
Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.
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.
To understand is to perceive patterns.