Will Durant

Education is the transmission of civilization.

— Will Durant

Liberty is a product of order.

— Will Durant

The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.

— Will Durant

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.

— Will Durant

Education is the transformation of civilisation

— Will Durant

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

— Will Durant

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

— Will Durant

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.

— Will Durant

“Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically[.]”

— Will Durant

“IV. IS MAN A MACHINE? Yes, said Julien Offroy de La Mettrie.”

— Will Durant

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.

— Will Durant

“Kant is the last person in the world whom we should read on Kant.”

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

“the fine or composition-money for killing a king was 30,000 thrimsas ($13,000);”

— Will Durant

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for…

— Will Durant

“Great gaps occur in the history of the art, because most of the early work was ruined by the climate, and much…

— Will Durant

In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty…

— Will Durant

“For as no perfect view of a country can be taken from a flat; so it is impossible to discover the remote…

— Will Durant

If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external…

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

“But before twenty is the joy of the body, and after thirty is the joy of the mind; before twenty is the…

— Will Durant

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power,…

— Will Durant

India was the mother of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages. She was the mother of our philosophy, mother…

— Will Durant

“There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or…

— Will Durant

“Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of…

— Will Durant

“Education is the reason why we behave like human beings. We are hardly born human. We are born ridiculous, malodorous animals. We…

— Will Durant

“If we go back to the beginning,” says Holbach, “we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm…

— Will Durant

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother,…

— Will Durant

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we…

— Will Durant

“the royal revenue was doubled from 600 to 1200 livres ($240,000) a day. In his reign the façade of Notre Dame was…

— Will Durant

“Here indeed was the great defect of the Greek mind: it was not disciplined; it lacked limiting and steadying traditions; it moved…

— Will Durant

“The constant steaming in of thoughts of others must suppress and confine our own and indeed in the long run paralyze the…

— Will Durant

What if it is for life's sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we…

— Will Durant

“The conquering troops plundered the wealthy capital, and found the booty so abundant “that every private man in the allied army became…

— Will Durant

“Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts – between individuals…

— Will Durant

“I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is…

— Will Durant

“And in the individual too, justice is effective coördination, the harmonious functioning of the elements in a man, each in its fit…

— Will Durant

“we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of…

— Will Durant