Will Durant Quotes
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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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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
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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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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
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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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In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.
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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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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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Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
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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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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 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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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.
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Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
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Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.
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Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.
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The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
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To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
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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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History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.