Quote for a Saturday

...I may go on to declare a good deal more than this [a basic notion of - whether justifiably or not - of one direction of positive liberty as coercing others for their own sake]. I may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, because there exists within them some occult entity - their latent rational will, or their 'true' purpose - and that this entity, although it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their 'real' self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or little; and that this inner spirit is the only self that deserves to have its wishes taken into account. Once I take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their 'real' selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, performance of duty, wisdom, a just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom - the free choice of his 'true,' albeit often submerged and inarticulate, self. (Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," section II).