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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
Belief
Cherished
Learns
Dogma
Beliefs
Begins
Particularly
Philosophy
Dogmas
Doubt
Axioms

More quotes by Will Durant

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The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
Will Durant
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Education is the transmission of civilization.
Will Durant
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Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
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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Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
Will Durant
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Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.
Will Durant
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The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.
Will Durant
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That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.
Will Durant
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The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.
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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Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.
Will Durant
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The Institutional Church (ecclesia) has killed only two kinds of people: Those who do not believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and those who do.
Will Durant
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
Will Durant
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Even when repressed, inequality grows only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.
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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Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.
Will Durant
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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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History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.
Will Durant
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Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant
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There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.
Will Durant