Will Durant Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Needs, Century

  Will Durant (2011). “The Reformation: The Story of Civilization”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1944). “The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ, a history of Roman civilization and of Christianity from their beginnings to A.D. 325”

  101 Copy quote

• 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

  111 Copy quote

• History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.

  Will Durant

  35 Copy quote

• 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

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (2012). “The Lessons of History”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

  47 Copy quote

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

  Will Durant

  Dust, Civilization, Earth

  Will Durant (2011). “The Life of Greece: The Story of Civilization”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

  35 Copy quote

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

  Will Durant

  Ignorance, Discovery, Years

  "Books: The Great Gadfly". Time Magazine (review of "The Age of Voltaire" by Will and Ariel Durant), October 8, 1965.

  47 Copy quote

• The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

  Will Durant

  Political, Acting, Triumph

  Will Durant (1929). “The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey of Human Life and Destiny”, Garden City, N.Y. : Garden City Publishing Company

  59 Copy quote

• So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Stoicism, Pleasure

  58 Copy quote

• 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

  Clever, Way, Speak

  "We Have a Right To Be Happy Today". Will Durant's commencement address at the Webb School of Claremont in California, June 7, 1958.

  42 Copy quote

• 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

  76 Copy quote

• Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

  Will Durant

  Learning, Acceptance, Science

  Will Durant (2011). “The Age of Faith: The Story of Civilization”, p.1077, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

• Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, History, Savages

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1968). “The lessons of history”, Simon & Schuster

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (2012). “The Lessons of History”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

  42 Copy quote

• Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.

  Will Durant

  Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding

  Will Durant (1929). “The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey of Human Life and Destiny”, Garden City, N.Y. : Garden City Publishing Company

  39 Copy quote

• Education is the transmission of civilization.

  Will Durant

  Education, Teacher, Teaching

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1968). “The lessons of history”, Simon & Schuster

  28 Copy quote

• To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.

  Will Durant

  Self, Giving, Meaning Of Life

  24 Copy quote

• There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

  Will Durant

  War, Past, Years

  44 Copy quote

• 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.

  Will Durant

  Real, Character, Individuality

  "The Lessons of History". Book by Will Durant and Ariel Durant, 1968.

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  Concentration Of Wealth, Numbers, Progressive Society

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1968). “The lessons of history”, Simon & Schuster

  31 Copy quote

• 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

  "Story of Civilization Our Oriental Heritage". Book by Will Durant, 1935.

  73 Copy quote

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

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Soul, Dies

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  22 Copy quote

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