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

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
Two
Longest
Points
Straight
Distance
Line
Philosophy
Lines
Politics

More quotes by Will Durant

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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
Will Durant
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As long as there is poverty there will be gods.
Will Durant
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Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
Will Durant
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The Institutional Church (ecclesia) has killed only two kinds of people: Those who do not believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and those who do.
Will Durant
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It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.
Will Durant
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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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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
Will Durant
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We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.
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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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
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.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.
Will Durant
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Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.
Will Durant
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Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.
Will Durant
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Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.
Will Durant
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
Will Durant
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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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In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.
Will Durant