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Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.

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
Foresight
Haste
Guard
Raising
Action
Power
Even
Lowering
Corrupts

More quotes by Will Durant

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It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
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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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Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
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History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
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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 experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.
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Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.
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There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
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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.
Will Durant
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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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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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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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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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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
Will Durant
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Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
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Liberty is a product of order.
Will Durant
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Nothing is new except arrangement.
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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.
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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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by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them
Will Durant