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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

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
Principles
Form
Government
Every
Perish
Tends
Excess
Principle
Basic

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The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
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No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
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For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
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Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
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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.
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History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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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
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Civilizations come and go they conquer the earth and crumble into dust but faith survives every desolation.
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Often your face is your autobiography
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Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
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Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
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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.
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Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
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That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.
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Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
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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
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