You have unquestionably the greatest critical mind of this generation – warmed with a charity that might well be the envy of 99 out of 100 Christians, and enriched with an ordering power so extraordinary that its mere operation is itself a creative act, affecting that which it touches & even changing it – just as scientific experimentation is said to alter, by its own action, the substance it is supposed to illuminate.

George Kennan to Isaiah Berlin, 16 June 1958

I have not the slightest faith in anything I write myself. It is exactly like money – if you make it yourself it seems a forgery. I still belong to a world where what comes from outside, even if it is printed in the newspapers, appears to carry great authority simply by virtue of the fact that it does come from outside, and anything made up by oneself, with however much blood, sweat, tears, seems fake, simply because it is made up by oneself – and the more professional it seems, the closer the fake to reality, the deeper the degree of the forgery. This is no doubt a most neurotic attitude towards one's work, and certainly absurd objectively speaking. Yet I have felt it all my life. Hence total lack of confidence in anything I do.

Isaiah Berlin to Jack Stephenson, 21 January 1963