Will Durant Quotes
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Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
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Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love; the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.
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From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
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Education is the transformation of civilisation.
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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
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Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
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Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
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So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.
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Drunkenness was in good repute in England till "Bloody Mary" frowned upon it; it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold.
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As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
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Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
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History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.
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We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.
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We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity; while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution; and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.
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Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.
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Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
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Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
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Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus. You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.
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If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
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If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.
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If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.
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Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
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An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.
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Often your face is your autobiography.