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There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

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
Society
Religion
Successfully
History
Maintaining
Without
Aids
Time
Significant
Life
Atheism
Example
Moral

More quotes by Will Durant

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The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
Will Durant
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If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string.
Will Durant
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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
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Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day
Will Durant
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The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
Will Durant
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From barbarism to civilization requires a century from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
Will Durant
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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
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The future never just happened. It was created.
Will Durant
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To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.
Will Durant
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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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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
Will Durant
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Even when repressed, inequality grows only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.
Will Durant
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So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty certainty is murderous.
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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I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality.
Will Durant
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In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.
Will Durant
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The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
Will Durant