Will Durant Quotes

102 Sourced Quotes

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
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
Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.

Will Durant
Every state begins in compulsion; but the habits of obedience become the content of conscience, and soon every citizen thrills with loyalty to the flag. The citizen is right; for however the state begins, it soon becomes an indispensable prop to order.

Will Durant
We see matter and we miss energy; we think that we know what matter is; but when at the heart of the atom we find energy, we are bewildered, and our categories melt away.

Will Durant
From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

Will Durant
All deductions having been made, democracy has done less harm, and more good, than any other form of government. It gave to human existence a zest and camaraderie that outweighed its pitfalls and defects. It gave to thought and science and enterprise the freedom essential to their operation and growth. It broke down the walls of privilege and class, and in each generation it raised up ability from every rank and place.

Will Durant
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.

Will Durant
Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces our death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all experience - can tell us when to heal and when to kill.

Will Durant
Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.

Will Durant
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life — peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law.

Will Durant
Those of you who specialize in science will find it hard to understand religion, unless you feel, as Voltaire did, that the harmony of the spheres reveals a cosmic mind, and unless you realize, as Rousseau did, that man does not live by intellect alone.

Will Durant
A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.

Will Durant
Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.

Will Durant
Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.

Will Durant