Will Durant Quotes
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A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.
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Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall; that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you; That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
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Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us; Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game.
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Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.
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Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational; and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.
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The victors called the revolution a triumph of liberty; but now and then liberty in the slogans of the strong means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.
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Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.
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History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
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Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
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History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.
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The dog that buried the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day - these were among the first creators of civilization. It was they....who taught our ancestors the art of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today, or of preparing for winter in summer's time of plenty.
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Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.
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The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
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Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths.
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Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.
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There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.
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Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages.
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The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
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Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
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If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
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Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
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All that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting for us. So is Aristotle. Spinoza is there and so is Kats. Shelly and Byron adn Sam Johnson are there waiting to tell us their magnificent stories. All you have to do is walk in the library door and the great company open their arms to you. They are so happy to see you that they come out with you into the street and to your home. And they do what hardly any friend will-- they are silent when you wish to think.
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To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.