Will Durant Quotes
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
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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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Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
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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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The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.
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Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
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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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Never put a man in the wrong. He will hold it against you forever.
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India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
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War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.
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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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A cat has a reputation to protect. If it had a halo, it would be worn cocked to one side.
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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
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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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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
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Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.
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By and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them.
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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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The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.
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India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
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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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Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.