"The experience obtained by both sides in the struggle during those dark years [after 1848] was a decisive factor in shaping the uncompromising character of the later revolutionary movement in Russia."
—Isaiah Berlin, ""Russia and 1848," 21.

"For there exists a great chasm between those who, on one side, who related everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel—a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say had significance—and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and completely contradictory, connected, if at all, only in dome de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is...