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History is mostly guessing the rest is prejudice.

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
Guessing
Mostly
Prejudice
Rest
History

More quotes by Will Durant

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Civilizations come and go they conquer the earth and crumble into dust but faith survives every desolation.
Will Durant
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Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.
Will Durant
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The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West it is whether men can bear to live without God.
Will Durant
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Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
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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As knowledge grew, fear decreased men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.
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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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
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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Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
Will Durant
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The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
Will Durant
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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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It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
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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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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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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If you wish to be loved, be modest if you wish to be admired, be proud if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
Will Durant
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As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
Will Durant
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It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.
Will Durant
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
Will Durant