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

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
Civilizations
Apathy
Decay
Civilization
Quite
Leisurely
Assures

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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.
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Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.
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Liberty is a luxury of security the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.
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The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
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Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
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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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Christianity did not destroy paganism it adopted it.
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Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
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We teach more by what we are than by what we teach.
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
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Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.
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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
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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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Never mind your happiness do your duty.
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The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
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Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
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The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
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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
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Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
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