Will Durant famous quotes

Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day
-- Will Durant

#Inspirational #Life #Positive

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
-- Will Durant

#Art #Communication #Half

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
-- Will Durant

#Graduation #Education #Witty

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
-- Will Durant

#Honesty #Fear #Integrity

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
-- Will Durant

#Political #Acting #Minorities

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.
-- Will Durant

#Mother #Philosophy #Race

The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.
-- Will Durant

#Health #Important #Wealth

If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
-- Will Durant

#Facts #Squandering #Amazed

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
-- Will Durant

#Education #Knowledge #Eye

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant

#Clever #Way #Speak

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
-- Will Durant

#Philosophy #Giving

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

#Men #Promise #Revolution

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
-- Will Durant

#Art #Philosophy #Achievement

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.
-- Will Durant

#War #Struggle #Rome

How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
-- Will Durant

#Suffering

It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.
-- Will Durant

#Change #Home #World

Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us; Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game
-- Will Durant

#Learning #Player #Objectivity

In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
-- Will Durant

#Distance #Philosophy #Two

Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.
-- Will Durant

#Men #Average #Desire

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.
-- Will Durant

#Running #Men #Circles

All that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting for us. So is Aristotle. Spinoza is there and so is Kats. Shelly and Byron adn Sam Johnson are there waiting to tell us their magnificent stories. All you have to do is walk in the library door and the great company open their arms to you. They are so happy to see you that they come out with you into the street and to your home. And they do what hardly any friend will-- they are silent when you wish to think.
-- Will Durant

#Plato #Home #Thinking

Education is the transmission of civilization.
-- Will Durant

#Education #Civilization #Transmission

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
-- Will Durant

#Environmental #Moral #Morality

The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
-- Will Durant

#Men #Ego #Mind

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
-- Will Durant

#Mind #Duty

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
-- Will Durant

#Learning #Acceptance #Science

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
-- Will Durant

#Islamic #Order #Civilization

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.
-- Will Durant

#Stress #Discovery #Order

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
-- Will Durant

#Liberty #Dictatorship

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
-- Will Durant

#Men #Thinking #Law

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.
-- Will Durant

#Order #Civilization #Liberty

India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
-- Will Durant

#Understanding #Tolerance #Mind

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.
-- Will Durant

#Country #Time #People

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

#Change #Civilization #Existence

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 revolutionaries are philosophers and saints.
-- Will Durant

#Real #Character #Individuality

Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.
-- Will Durant

#Tolerance #Certainty #Grows

Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
-- Will Durant

#Thinking #Library #Mankind

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
-- Will Durant

#Religion #Atheism #Maintaining

There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
-- Will Durant

#Past #Found #Flourishing

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.
-- Will Durant

#Enemy #Unions #Utopia

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. We teach more by what we are than by what we teach.
-- Will Durant

#Ignorance #Discovery #Years

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.
-- Will Durant

#Numbers #Rivals #May

So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.
-- Will Durant

#Country #Europe #Roles

What if it is for life's sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we think ourselves such that death seems unforgivable. We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life; we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong. If we were to live forever, growth would be stifled, and youth would find no room on earth. Death, like style, is the removal of rubbish, the circumcision of the superfluous. In the midst of death life renews itself immortally.
-- Will Durant

#Strong #Struggle #Thinking

Drunkenness was in good repute in England till "Bloody Mary" frowned upon it; it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold.
-- Will Durant

#Drinking #England #Germany

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

#Book #Eye #Night

Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God?
-- Will Durant

#Christian #Religious #Men

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
-- Will Durant

#Philosophy #Self #Discipline

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard
-- Will Durant

#Wise #Men #Lasts

The victors called the revolution a triumph of liberty; but now and then liberty in the slogans of the strong means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.
-- Will Durant

#Strong #War #Mean

Never put a man in the wrong. He will hold it against you forever.
-- Will Durant

#Men #Forever

Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.
-- Will Durant

#Civilization #Dust #Earth

Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
-- Will Durant

#Dream #War #Civilization

Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
-- Will Durant

#Rich

The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can't be done.
-- Will Durant

#Nature #Motivation #People

If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
-- Will Durant

#Pride #Wish #Proud

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

#Real #Mind #Progress

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

#Men #He Man #Manage

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

#Wall #Government #Zest

Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
-- Will Durant

#Historical #Christ #Found

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.
-- Will Durant

#Paganism #Christianity #Adopted

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.
-- Will Durant

#Past #Police #Doubt

For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
-- Will Durant

#Civilization #Missing #Turbulence

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

#Peace #Unstable #Supremacy

Liberty is a product of order.
-- Will Durant

#Order #Liberty

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

#Business #Ideas #Diversity

We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.
-- Will Durant

#Views #Wealth #Heartbeat

Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change.
-- Will Durant

#Civilization #Missing #Needs

History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.
-- Will Durant

#History #Rich #Cases

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
-- Will Durant

#Broken Heart #Truth #Minorities

Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall; that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you; That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
-- Will Durant

#Song #Strong #Fall

When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
-- Will Durant

#Liberty #Chaos #Dictatorship

Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
-- Will Durant

#Nature #Equality #Independence

Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.
-- Will Durant

#Bitter #Gentle

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.
-- Will Durant

#Men #Europe #America

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
-- Will Durant

#Education #Men #Woe

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.
-- Will Durant

#Freedom #Broadway #Looks

Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.
-- Will Durant

#Men #Law #Liberty

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.
-- Will Durant

#Order #Civilization

We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.
-- Will Durant

#People #Events #Earth