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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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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
Everything
Progressive
Nothing
Diversity
Years
Discovery
Ignorance
Knew
Education
Teach
Culture
Sixty

More quotes by Will Durant

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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
Will Durant
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An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.
Will Durant
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
Will Durant
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Every state begins in compulsion but the habits of obedience become the content of conscience, and soon every citizen thrills with loyalty to the flag. The citizen is right for however the state begins, it soon becomes an indispensable prop to order.
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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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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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
Will Durant
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As knowledge grew, fear decreased men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.
Will Durant
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Communism is the opiate of the people.
Will Durant
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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
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
Will Durant
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Liberty is a product of order.
Will Durant
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The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
Will Durant
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When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
Will Durant
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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
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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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Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
Will Durant
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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
Will Durant
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Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Will Durant
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I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.
Will Durant