Will Durant Quotes
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A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
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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.
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For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
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Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
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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 Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
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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 In the end, education, like happiness, is individual, and must come to us from life and from ourselves. There is no way; each pilgrim must make his own path. "Happiness," said Chamfort, "is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.
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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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In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
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To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
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Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
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Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.
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The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.
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Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.
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History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.
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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
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In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.
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Liberty is a product of order.
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Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.
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History assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.
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The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.
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War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.