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“The ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish
on the part of the individual to be hisown master. I wish my
life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of
whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of
other men’s, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be
moved by reasons, by conscious purposes which are my own, not
by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be
somebody, not nobody; a doer — deciding, not being decided for,
self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other
men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of play-
ing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my
own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when
I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes
me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all,
to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bear-
ing responsibility for his choices and able to explain them by
reference to his own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree
that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I
am made to realize that it is not.”
Source: Two concepts of Liberty by Berlin: Four Essays on Liberty (1969)
