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War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.

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
Democracy
War
History
Constants
Diminished
Civilization

More quotes by Will Durant

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For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
Will Durant
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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
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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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Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God?
Will Durant
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A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
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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Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages.
Will Durant
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As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
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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Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
Will Durant
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The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.
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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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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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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How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
Will Durant
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To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
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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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