Quote

[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.

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
Decay
Civilization
Quite
Leisurely
Assures
Civilizations
Apathy

More quotes by Will Durant

Image
It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Never mind your happiness do your duty.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.
Will Durant
Image
by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them
Will Durant
Image
I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process
Will Durant
Image
Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages.
Will Durant
Image
Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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
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
Image
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will Durant
Image
Time sanctifies everything even the most arrant theft in the hands of the robber's grandchildren becomes sacred and inviolable property.
Will Durant
Image
The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
Will Durant
Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
If you wish to be loved, be modest if you wish to be admired, be proud if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
Will Durant