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

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Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.
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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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The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
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The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.
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It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
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Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
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To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
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Caesar's armies marched on vegetarian foods.
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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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A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
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Christianity did not destroy paganism it adopted it.
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So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.
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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
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No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
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Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
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Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.
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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
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If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
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