Will Durant Quotes

When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.

I know that the hard work got me here. And the day I stop working hard, this can all go away.

Drunkenness was in good repute in England till "Bloody Mary" frowned upon it; it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.

Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say.

We teach more by what we are than by what we teach.

by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them

The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can't be done.

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I just know for sure I'm going to keep playing basketball.

Caesar's armies marched on vegetarian foods.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.

Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.

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

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.

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

Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.

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

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.

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

I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality.

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

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

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

I ain't got no beef with nobody.

I'm going to be me at the end of the day. And I think my family appreciates that. They're happy for me that I'm finding out who I am, and I'm content with that.

When people are used to you doing something, they want you to stay in that lane.

When you got people behind you, you can do whatever.

So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.

To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.

Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.

Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.

As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.

I'm just trying to grow. That's one thing I told myself is, 'Don't worry about who people say is the best player'.

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

Today's rebel is tomorrow's tyrant.

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

I'm just more content with myself. Like, if I've got something to say, I want to get it off of my chest.

If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.

I like to sit on things and digest them and then I'll figure out my next move, but I never said I was right for doing anything.

As long as there is poverty there will be gods.

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.