Will Durant Quotes
-
There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
-
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.
-
The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.
-
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.
-
How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
-
The finger that turns the dial rules the air.
-
To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.
-
Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God?
-
The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.
-
When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
-
There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
-
In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.
-
What if it is for life's sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we think ourselves such that death seems unforgivable. We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life; we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong. If we were to live forever, growth would be stifled, and youth would find no room on earth. Death, like style, is the removal of rubbish, the circumcision of the superfluous. In the midst of death life renews itself immortally.
-
Nothing is new except arrangement.
-
Communism is the opiate of the people.
-
No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
-
The future never just happened. It was created.
-
Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.
-
Time sanctifies everything; even the most arrant theft in the hands of the robber's grandchildren becomes sacred and inviolable property.
-
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.
-
Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
-
Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.
-
As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.
-
Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals.