Will Durant Quotes

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.

Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.

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.

The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.

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

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.

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

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

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.

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

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

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

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

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

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.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

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.

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

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

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.