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Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

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
Learns
Dogma
Beliefs
Begins
Particularly
Philosophy
Dogmas
Doubt
Axioms
Belief
Cherished

More quotes by Will Durant

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Liberty is a luxury of security the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.
Will Durant
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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
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
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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.
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.
Will Durant
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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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Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God?
Will Durant
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The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.
Will Durant
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We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.
Will Durant
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Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages.
Will Durant
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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
Will Durant
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As to harmonizing the theory of evolution with the Biblical account of creation, I do not believe it can be done, and I do not see why it should be. The story of Genesis is beautiful, and profoundly significant as symbolism: there is no good reason to torture it into conformity with modern theory.
Will Durant
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There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
Will Durant
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We teach more by what we are than by what we teach.
Will Durant
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History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.
Will Durant
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So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.
Will Durant
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To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.
Will Durant
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Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.
Will Durant
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Liberty is a product of order.
Will Durant
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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
Will Durant