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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
Haste
Guard
Raising
Action
Power
Even
Lowering
Corrupts
Foresight

More quotes by Will Durant

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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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Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus. You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.
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The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.
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As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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Drunkenness was in good repute in England till Bloody Mary frowned upon it it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold.
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Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
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Communism is the opiate of the people.
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
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[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.
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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
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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.
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No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
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How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
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History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
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History is mostly guessing the rest is prejudice.
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If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string.
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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
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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It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.
Will Durant