Taken from
here...
"
The Hedgehog and the Fox is the title of an essay by Isaiah Berlin, regarding the Russian author Leo Tolstoy's theory of history."
The title refers to a fragment of text attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus:
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." (This part is the only part of this article I knew and have heard before, a rather quotable line... - Eric)
Isaiah Berlin (after giving a number of examples of authors in each category...) considers Tolstoy, and after considering that it seems that he falls in neither category suggests instead, that while Tolstoy's talents are those of a fox, his beliefs are that one ought to be a hedgehog, and thus Tolstoy's own voluminous assessments of his own work are misleading.
(Edited excerpt concluded, will look for book...)
