Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

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

— 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

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

— Will Durant

Often your face is your autobiography

— Will Durant

“[Herbert Spencer] was ready in those days to give everything a trial; he even thought of migrating to New Zealand, forgetting that…

— Will Durant

So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the…

— Will Durant

Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when…

— Will Durant

“Frederick agreed that the punishment of La Barre was extreme; for his part he would rather have condemned the youth to read…

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history…

— Will Durant

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. . . let us be above such transparent egotism.”

— 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

Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious…

— Will Durant

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

— Will Durant

“apparently there was no reason now why a man should not do as he pleased, so long as he remained within the…

— Will Durant

“States are built not on the ideals but on the nature of men.”

— Will Durant

Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm…

— Will Durant

Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them…

— Will Durant

“Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle…

— Will Durant

“Spinoza compares the feeling of free will to a stone’s thinking, as it travels through space, that it determines its own trajectory…

— Will Durant

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.

— Will Durant

The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.

— Will Durant