Will Durant Quotes

149 quotes in 1756 categories

• No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
• Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
• 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,…
• Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say.
• If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
• Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and…
• It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.
• In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.
• An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give…
• Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.
• Time sanctifies everything; even the most arrant theft in the hands of the robber's grandchildren becomes sacred and inviolable property.
• Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done.
• It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
• Every state begins in compulsion; but the habits of obedience become the content of conscience, and soon every citizen thrills with loyalty to the flag.…
• Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe…
• In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.
• Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that…
• The dog that buried the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees…
• The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.
• History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.

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