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

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
Wish
Fears
Fear
Honesty
Action
Integrity
Character
Minds
Mind
Virtue
Think
Trouble
Thinking
Acting
Wishes
People
Rather
Hopes

More quotes by Will Durant

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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.
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Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.
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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.
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Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God?
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A cat has a reputation to protect. If it had a halo, it would be worn cocked to one side.
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To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.
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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I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process
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An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.
Will Durant
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Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
Will Durant
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Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
Will Durant
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Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
Will Durant
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The finger that turns the dial rules the air.
Will Durant
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War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.
Will Durant
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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
Will Durant
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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
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Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
Will Durant
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Liberty is a luxury of security the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.
Will Durant