Will Durant Quotes

Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.

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

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.

Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.

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.

I want people to know what they didn't know about me. I just wanted them to know the real side.

I want to show people who I really am, especially aspiring basketball players who want to be at this level. That's what I'm about.

Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?

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.

Communism is the opiate of the people.

It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.

How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.

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.

Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.

The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilised.

I just loved being in the gym. It was tough at times. Sometimes I wanted to quit, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.

Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.

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.

The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.

Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.

Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.

Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.

In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.

There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

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

Man, not the earth, makes civilization.

I'm tired of being second.... I'm done with it.

I like what I like, I am who I am, I know what I want to do, you know what I'm saying?

I'm a big competitor.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.

Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages.

The victors called the revolution a triumph of liberty; but now and then liberty in the slogans of the strong means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

You know, I think more people should watch women's basketball. It'd do so much for the game.

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

I always want to win because I never want to sit out on the sidelines outside.

I'm just content with myself, happy with myself.

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

Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals

For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.

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

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

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

Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.

The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history.