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Time sanctifies everything even the most arrant theft in the hands of the robber's grandchildren becomes sacred and inviolable property.

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
Time
Theft
Grandchildren
Sacred
Arrant
Property
Sanctifies
Becomes
Inviolable
Hands
Robber
Everything
Sanctify
Even
Robbers

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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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There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
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The future never just happened. It was created.
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How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
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To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.
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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.
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
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That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.
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History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.
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Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
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[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Never mind your happiness do your duty.
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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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The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
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In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.
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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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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
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