Will Durant Quotes
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To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
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The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West; it is whether men can bear to live without God.
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A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
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For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
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In progressive societies the concentration of wealth may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
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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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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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A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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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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History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.
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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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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
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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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In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.
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In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
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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.
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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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Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
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The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.
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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.