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The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

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
History
Civilizations
Ruins
North
Conquer
Creates
Borrows
Spread
Conquers
South
Summary
Civilization
Spreads

More quotes by Will Durant

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Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.
Will Durant
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If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.
Will Durant
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India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
Will Durant
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Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.
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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
Will Durant
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The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
Will Durant
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To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.
Will Durant
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There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.
Will Durant
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by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them
Will Durant
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From barbarism to civilization requires a century from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
Will Durant
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In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
Will Durant
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
Will Durant
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History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
Will Durant
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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Civilization is not inherited it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.
Will Durant