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So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.

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
Dies
Scepticism
Religion
Stoic
Individual
Civilizations
Born
Unbelief
Ends
Pursuit
Begin
Epicurean
Civilization
Stoicism
Pleasure
Undisciplined

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There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.
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How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
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Every state begins in compulsion but the habits of obedience become the content of conscience, and soon every citizen thrills with loyalty to the flag. The citizen is right for however the state begins, it soon becomes an indispensable prop to order.
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Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
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Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.
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Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
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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.
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History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.
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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
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Caesar's armies marched on vegetarian foods.
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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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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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The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
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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.
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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.
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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
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Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
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