A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole.… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“One of the lessons of history is that the gods can be silent in many languages.” — Will Durant Copy Share Image
There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself. — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic. — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“All this is, of course, the old philosophic distinction between reason and passion; but Spinoza adds vitally to Socrates and the Stoics.… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“Here indeed was the great defect of the Greek mind: it was not disciplined; it lacked limiting and steadying traditions; it moved… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“This is the tragedy of almost every civilization—that its soul is in its faith, and seldom survives philosophy.” — Will Durant Copy Share Image
In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line. — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“Hence the uselessness of logic: no one ever convinced anybody by logic; and even logicians use logic only as a source of income. To… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“Intellectualism—the conception of man as above all a thinking animal, consciously adapting means to rationally chosen ends—fell sick with Rousseau, took to its bed… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“All those fascinating varieties of terrain—mountains and valleys, fiords and straits, gulfs and streams—that make Europe a panorama of diverse delight, have broken the… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
“To be great is not to be placed above humanity, ruling others; but to stand above the partialities and futilities of uninformed desire, and… — Will Durant Copy Share Image
