Will Durant Quotes (53 Quotes)

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

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

We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

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

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.

The future never just happened. It was created.

If you wish to be loved, be modest if you wish to be admired, be proud if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.

Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.

Even when repressed, inequality grows only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints.

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.

It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I havenot had time to remake the world.

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, a little modesty, a little courtesy We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.

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

The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.

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

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

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

It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

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

I am not against hasty marriages, where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.

Nothing is new except arrangement.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

Does history support a belief in God If by God we mean not the creative vitality of nature but a supreme being intelligent and benevolent, the answer must be a reluctant negative.

The worship of Mary transformed Catholicism from a religion of terror - perhaps necessary in the Dark Ages - into a religion of mercy and love