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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

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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
Within
Trade
Consuming
Moral
Taxes
Rome
War
Civilization
Decline
Political
Failing
Wars
Bureaucratic
Without
Struggle
Lays
Stifling
Great
Causes
Destroyed
Despotism
People
Class
Essential
Conquered
Politics
Essentials
Morals

More quotes by Will Durant

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Liberty is a product of order.
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The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West it is whether men can bear to live without God.
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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.
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
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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.
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Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.
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Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.
Will Durant
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Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
Will Durant
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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
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The future never just happened. It was created.
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Civilizations come and go they conquer the earth and crumble into dust but faith survives every desolation.
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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Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Will Durant
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For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
Will Durant
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Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
Will Durant
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The finger that turns the dial rules the air.
Will Durant
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The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.
Will Durant
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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
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 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