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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

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
Expanding
Desert
Ignorance
Knowledge
Receding
Mirage
Mirages

More quotes by Will Durant

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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
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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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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We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.
Will Durant
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So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.
Will Durant
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In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry in its decadence, philosophy and logic.
Will Durant
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
Will Durant
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Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus. You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.
Will Durant
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We teach more by what we are than by what we teach.
Will Durant
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India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
Will Durant
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I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality.
Will Durant
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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
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Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
Will Durant
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So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.
Will Durant
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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
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To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
Will Durant