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The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.

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
Fear
Equality
Capitalism
East
Increase
West
Widen
Soon
Twain
Meet
Compelled
Freedom
Socialism

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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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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
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Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.
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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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Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.
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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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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.
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Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
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In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
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Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
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Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change.
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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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To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.
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Science tells us how to heal and how to kill it reduces our death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war but only wisdom - desire coordinated in the light of all experience - can tell us when to heal and when to kill.
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Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
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Never mind your happiness do your duty.
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In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.
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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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