Quote

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

Will Durant

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Machine
Machines
Majority
Politics
Triumphs
Acting
Minority
United
Minorities
Political
Divided
Triumph

More quotes by Will Durant

Image
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 is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.
Will Durant
Image
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 raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.
Will Durant
Image
Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.
Will Durant
Image
When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
Will Durant
Image
Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
Will Durant
Image
To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.
Will Durant
Image
Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
Will Durant
Image
How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
Will Durant
Image
The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.
Will Durant
Image
Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
Will Durant
Image
The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
Will Durant
Image
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
Will Durant
Image
As long as there is poverty there will be gods.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
Will Durant
Image
Communism is the opiate of the people.
Will Durant
Image
Christianity did not destroy paganism it adopted it.
Will Durant
Image
Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.
Will Durant
Image
Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.
Will Durant
Image
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 revolutionists are philosophers and saints.
Will Durant