Will Durant Quotes
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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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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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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
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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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In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.
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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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War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.
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Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
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Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.
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Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.
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I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.
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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
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It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
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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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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
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Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.
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Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
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India was the motherland of our race and Samskrit the mother of Europe 's languages...Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
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We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.
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In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
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The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
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History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.