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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
Doubt
Axioms
Belief
Cherished
Learns
Dogma
Beliefs
Begins
Particularly
Philosophy
Dogmas

More quotes by Will Durant

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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.
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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If you wish to be loved, be modest if you wish to be admired, be proud if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
Will Durant
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Education is the transformation of civilisation
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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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
Will Durant
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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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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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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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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
Will Durant
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Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
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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India was the motherland of our race and Samskrit the mother of Europe 's languages...Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
Will Durant
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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.
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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How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
Will Durant
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.
Will Durant