Isaiah Berlin uses a fragment from Archilochus, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” to categorize thinkers into two groups: hedgehogs, who focus on one defining idea, and foxes, who draw from diverse experiences. Berlin analyzes historical thinkers using this framework, suggesting it reveals their approaches to understanding the world.
Berlin describes Leo Tolstoy as a fox who wished to be a hedgehog, arguing this inner conflict contributed to his great literary works like War and Peace and Anna Karenina.