Will Durant Quotes
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It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.
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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.
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History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.
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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.
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
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Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.
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Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.
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Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.
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We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.
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If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
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Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
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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.
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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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All deductions having been made, democracy has done less harm, and more good, than any other form of government. It gave to human existence a zest and camaraderie that outweighed its pitfalls and defects. It gave to thought and science and enterprise the freedom essential to their operation and growth. It broke down the walls of privilege and class, and in each generation it raised up ability from every rank and place.
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It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.
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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals.
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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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The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
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Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.
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Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
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Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
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The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
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Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
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Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.