History Quotes by Will Durant

Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.

— Will Durant

To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.

— Will Durant

[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.

— Will Durant

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.

— Will Durant

Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

“There is no humorist like history.”

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.

— 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

The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

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

— 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

“War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of…

— Will Durant

“Religions of hope and love are a luxury of security and order; the need for striking fear into a subject or rebellious…

— Will Durant

The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration…

— 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

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

— Will Durant

Does history support a belief in God? If by God we mean not the creative vitality of nature but a supreme being…

— Will Durant

Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus. You may think that's a lot of…

— 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

A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole.…

— Will Durant

All that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting…

— Will Durant

“This is the secret of the political history of modern India. Weakened by division, it succumbed to invaders; impoverished by invaders, it…

— Will Durant

“Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science. ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial…

— Will Durant

Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the…

— Will Durant

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is…

— Will Durant

“Edward I (1272–1307) was less a scholar than his father, and more a king; ambitious, strong of will, tenacious in war, subtle…

— Will Durant

“History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To…

— 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

History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.

— Will Durant

History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can…

— Will Durant

“One of the lessons of history is that the gods can be silent in many languages.”

— Will Durant

History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a…

— Will Durant

“Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to…

— Will Durant

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things…

— Will Durant