Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Isiah Berlin

Quote by Isiah Berlin

“...justice cannot live in a society which tolerates economic inequality and exploitation.”

Quote by Isiah Berlin

Create image

Author

Isiah Berlin

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Isiah Berlin. more

You May Also Like

“The Communist revolution, conducted in the name of doing away with classes, has resulted in the most complete authority of any single new class ... The new class is voracious and insatiable, just as the bourgeoisie was. But it does not have the virtues of frugality and economy that the bourgeoisie had. The new class is as exclusive as the aristocracy but without aristocracy's refinement and proud chivalry ... The totalitarian tyranny and control of the new class, which came into being during the revolution, has become the yoke from under which the blood and sweat of all members of society flow.”

ClassRevolutionCommunismBureaucracyTotalitarian
Book:The New Class: An Analysis Of The Communist System
Create image

“I KNEW IT WAS OVER when tonight you couldn't make the phone ring when you used to make the sun rise when trees used to throw themselves in front of you to be paper for love letters that was how i knew i had to do it swaddle the kids we never had against january's cold slice bundle them in winter clothes they never needed so i could drop them off at my mom's even though she lives on the other side of the country and at this late west coast hour is assuredly east coast sleeping peacefully her house was lit like a candle the way homes should be warm and golden and home and the kids ran in and jumped at the bichon frise named lucky that she never had they hugged the dog it wriggled and the kids were happy yours and mine the ones we never had and my mom was grand maternal, which is to say, with style that only comes when you've seen enough to know grace like when to pretend it's christmas or a birthday so she lit her voice with tiny lights and pretended she didn't see me crying as i drove away to the hotel connected to the bar where i ordered the cheapest whisky they had just because it shares your first name because they don't make a whisky called baby and i only thought what i got was what i ordered i toasted the hangover inevitable as sun that used to rise in your name i toasted the carnivals we never went to and the things you never won for me the ferris wheels we never kissed on and all the dreams between us that sat there like balloons on a carney's board waiting to explode with passion but slowly deflated hung slave under the pin- prick of a tack hung heads down like lovers when it doesn't work, like me at last call after too many cheap too many sweet too much whisky makes me sick, like the smell of cheap, like the smell of the dead like the cheap, dead flowers you never sent that i never threw out of the window of a car i never really owned”

PoetryRelationshipsBreakups
Book:Final Girl
Create image

“Under communism, the conceptual engine that animated the communist ideology was the idea of class struggle, supposedly fought throughout the entire history of humanity. In a liberal democracy, this engine—believed to have been present in the history of humanity since the beginning of time—is an improved version of the original. The Marxists had only “class” as an ideological leverage. In today’s liberal democracy the main ideological triad is “class, race, and gender.”

RaceClassGenderCommunism
Book:The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
Create image

“What idiots we were! How misinformed! Why didn't we understand that we were happily condemning ourselves to being nothing better than motor-mechanics? Why couldn't we see that? For Eleanor's crowd hard words and sophisticated ideas were in the air they breathed from birth, and this language was the currency that bought you the best of what the world could offer. But for us it could only ever be a second language, consciously acquired.”

Class
Book:The Buddha of Suburbia
Create image