hedgehog and the fox

 John Bartlett.──17th ed., Bartlett's familiar quotations, 2002

p.56

Archilochus

early 7th century B.C.

22    The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing.1

          Fragment 103

          1  the fox has man tricks, and the hedgehog has only one, but that is the best of all.── erasmus, Adagia [1500].

          see sir Isaiah Berlin, 782:3.

p.782

Sir Isaiah Berlin

1909─1997

3   There exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single, central vision, one system more or less coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel ... and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory ....  The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes .... Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second. 

          The  Hedgehog and the Fox [1953], pt. 1 1

          1  see Archilochus, 56:22.

p.142:15

p.142

Niccolò Machiavelli5

1469─1527

15    A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.  One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. 

          The prince, 17 

   ( Bartlett's familiar quotations : a collection of passages, phrases, and proverbs traced to their sources in ancient and modern literature / John Bartlett; edited by Justin Kaplan.──17th ed., rev. and enl., 1. quotation, English, PN6081.B27  1992, 808.88'2──dc20, 2002, )

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