Quote

Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.

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
Intended
Hopeful
Statement
Statements
Funny
Swift
Aviation

More quotes by Will Durant

Image
Christianity did not destroy paganism it adopted it.
Will Durant
Image
Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Nothing is new except arrangement.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
Will Durant
Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
Will Durant
Image
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
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
Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.
Will Durant
Image
Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.
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
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
Image
Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.
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
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
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
Image
Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.
Will Durant
Image
The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.
Will Durant