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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.

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
Generation
Civilization
Generations
Transmission
Learned
Anew
Century
Inherited
Dies
Interrupted
History
Earned
Would
Savages

More quotes by Will Durant

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Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.
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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.
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In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
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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.
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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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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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There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
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History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.
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Education is the transformation of civilisation
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
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In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
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In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
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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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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
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The victors called the revolution a triumph of liberty but now and then liberty in the slogans of the strong means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.
Will Durant
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If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
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Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say.
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Caesar's armies marched on vegetarian foods.
Will Durant