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Nothing is new except arrangement.
Will Durant -
Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
Will Durant
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So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.
Will Durant -
No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
Will Durant -
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.
Will Durant -
That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.
Will Durant -
In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.
Will Durant -
If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string.
Will Durant
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There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
Will Durant -
Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
Will Durant -
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
Will Durant -
Communism is the opiate of the people.
Will Durant -
It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.
Will Durant -
How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
Will Durant
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As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.
Will Durant -
There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
Will Durant -
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.
Will Durant -
Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
Will Durant -
I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality.
Will Durant -
To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.
Will Durant
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The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
Will Durant -
A cat has a reputation to protect. If it had a halo, it would be worn cocked to one side.
Will Durant -
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Will Durant -
And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.
Will Durant