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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
Great
Uncritical
Snare
Snares
Assumptions
Irrational
Assumption
Acceptance
Thought

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Often your face is your autobiography
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In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.
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Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say.
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The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.
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A cat has a reputation to protect. If it had a halo, it would be worn cocked to one side.
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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.
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The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
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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.
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The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.
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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
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Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths
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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.
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An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
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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.
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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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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.
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It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.
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Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?
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The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
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