Quote

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

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

More quotes by Will Durant

Image
Nothing is new except arrangement.
Will Durant
Image
Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant
Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will Durant
Image
Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.
Will Durant
Image
Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.
Will Durant
Image
Never put a man in the wrong. He will hold it against you forever.
Will Durant
Image
The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can't be done.
Will Durant
Image
Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
Will Durant
Image
I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process
Will Durant
Image
Education is the transformation of civilisation
Will Durant
Image
Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus. You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.
Will Durant
Image
The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.
Will Durant
Image
If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.
Will Durant
Image
Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
Will Durant
Image
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
Will Durant
Image
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
Will Durant
Image
In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry in its decadence, philosophy and logic.
Will Durant
Image
The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
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