Quote

In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.

Will Durant

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Line
Philosophy
Lines
Politics
Longest
Two
Points
Straight
Distance

More quotes by Will Durant

Image
Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
Will Durant
Image
Often your face is your autobiography
Will Durant
Image
To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.
Will Durant
Image
The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
Will Durant
Image
When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Will Durant
Image
Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.
Will Durant
Image
If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
Will Durant
Image
The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.
Will Durant
Image
A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
Will Durant
Image
In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.
Will Durant
Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
Will Durant
Image
The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.
Will Durant