Quote

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

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
Change
Geology
Without
Consent
Notice
Exists
Subject
Civilization
Subjects
Geologist
Existence
Geological

More quotes by Will Durant

Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
Will Durant
Image
A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
Will Durant
Image
From barbarism to civilization requires a century from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
Will Durant
Image
We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.
Will Durant
Image
So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.
Will Durant
Image
Liberty is a product of order.
Will Durant
Image
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Will Durant
Image
The finger that turns the dial rules the air.
Will Durant
Image
We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.
Will Durant
Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
Civilization is not inherited it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.
Will Durant
Image
Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.
Will Durant
Image
Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.
Will Durant
Image
Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages.
Will Durant
Image
Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
Will Durant