Will Durant Quotes

102 Sourced Quotes

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Will Durant
Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Will Durant
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.

Will Durant
And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.

Will Durant
It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it.

Will Durant
If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.

Will Durant
The discipline of desire is the backbone of character.

Will Durant
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.

Will Durant
Human history is a fragment of biology. Man is one of countless millions of species and, like all the rest, is subject to the struggle for existence and the competition of the fittest to survive.

Will Durant
To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.

Will Durant
Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.

Will Durant
An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.

Will Durant
The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

Will Durant
Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done.

Will Durant
As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.

Will Durant
In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.

Will Durant
Astrology antedated — and perhaps will survive — astronomy; simple souls are more interested in telling futures than in telling time.

Will Durant
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.

Will Durant
The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.

Will Durant
Time sanctifies everything; even the most arrant theft in the hands of the robber's grandchildren becomes sacred and inviolable property.

Will Durant
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.

Will Durant
History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.

Will Durant
History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.

Will Durant
The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.

Will Durant
The dog that buried the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day - these were among the first creators of civilization. It was they....who taught our ancestors the art of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today, or of preparing for winter in summer's time of plenty.

Will Durant
Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.

Will Durant
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.

Will Durant
Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love; the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.

Will Durant
It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.

Will Durant
Science is analytical description, philosophy is synthetic interpretation. Science wishes to resolve the whole into the known.

Will Durant