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

Will Durant

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Will Durant
Age: 96 †
Born: 1885
Born: November 5
Died: 1981
Died: November 7
Historian
Philosopher
Writer
North Adams
Massachusetts
William James Will Durant
William James Durant
Speaking
Communication
Especially
Half
Art
Nothing
Diplomats
Diplomacy

More quotes by Will Durant

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Education is the transmission of civilization.
Will Durant
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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
Will Durant
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It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string.
Will Durant
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As to harmonizing the theory of evolution with the Biblical account of creation, I do not believe it can be done, and I do not see why it should be. The story of Genesis is beautiful, and profoundly significant as symbolism: there is no good reason to torture it into conformity with modern theory.
Will Durant
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Never put a man in the wrong. He will hold it against you forever.
Will Durant
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There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
Will Durant
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The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
Will Durant
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Science tells us how to heal and how to kill it reduces our death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all experience - can tell us when to heal and when to kill.
Will Durant
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To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.
Will Durant
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That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.
Will Durant
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We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.
Will Durant
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As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
Will Durant
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I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
Will Durant