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

More quotes by Will Durant

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It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
Will Durant
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Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change.
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A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
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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.
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History is mostly guessing the rest is prejudice.
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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.
Will Durant
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Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
Will Durant
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The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
Will Durant
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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
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We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.
Will Durant
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The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.
Will Durant
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Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard
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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.
Will Durant
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
Will Durant
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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
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
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To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
Will Durant
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When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
Will Durant