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Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

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
Customs
Minorities
Begins
Broken
Truth
Originates
Every
Precedent
Always
Custom
Minority

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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
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India was the motherland of our race and Samskrit the mother of Europe 's languages...Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
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The future never just happened. It was created.
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History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.
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Never put a man in the wrong. He will hold it against you forever.
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There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
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It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
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Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty certainty is murderous.
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Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
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The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws.
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The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
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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.
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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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There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.
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Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
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There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
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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.
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When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
Will Durant