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The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.

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
Snare
Snares
Assumptions
Irrational
Assumption
Acceptance
Thought
Great
Uncritical

More quotes by Will Durant

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There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
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The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can't be done.
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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.
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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
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[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.
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Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies.
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War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.
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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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How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
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Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
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Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day
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.
Will Durant
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I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.
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.
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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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We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.
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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The finger that turns the dial rules the air.
Will Durant
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The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.
Will Durant