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When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.

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
Dictatorship
Chaos
Intelligence
Liberty
Exceeds
Begets
Exceed

More quotes by Will Durant

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Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Will Durant
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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
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Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.
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The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
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Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
Will Durant
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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
Will Durant
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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
Will Durant
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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
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The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.
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Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.
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Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
Will Durant
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From barbarism to civilization requires a century from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
Will Durant
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History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.
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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The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.
Will Durant
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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
Will Durant
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Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
Will Durant
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Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.
Will Durant