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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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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
Upon
Scorn
Persecute
Comes
Popularity
Conferred
Night
Unseen
Rebels
Hands
Rebel
Timidity
Change
Governments
Reformers
Government
Officials
Ceased
Great
Whose
Mystic
World
Virtue
Caution
Capitals

More quotes by 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.
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A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
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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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Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
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The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.
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As long as there is poverty there will be gods.
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It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
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History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.
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As knowledge grew, fear decreased men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
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Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
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Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.
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For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
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If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.
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Christianity did not destroy paganism it adopted it.
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