Will Durant Quotes
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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.
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In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.
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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.
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.
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Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces our death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all experience - can tell us when to heal and when to kill.
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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
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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.
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In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.
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History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.
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The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws.
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As long as there is poverty there will be gods.
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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
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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.
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Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change.
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Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
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I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process.
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Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
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The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
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To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
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Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the bankers know that history is inflationary.
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The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.