Quote

Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.

Will Durant

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Wells
Well
Think
Thinking
Libraries
Rejoice
Library
Mankind
Read

More quotes by Will Durant

Image
If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string.
Will Durant
Image
For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change.
Will Durant
Image
Never mind your happiness do your duty.
Will Durant
Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Will Durant
Image
Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.
Will Durant
Image
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.
Will Durant
Image
Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
Will Durant
Image
In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.
Will Durant
Image
A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
Will Durant
Image
Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds.
Will Durant
Image
We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.
Will Durant
Image
How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
Will Durant
Image
As long as there is poverty there will be gods.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
Will Durant
Image
Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
Will Durant
Image
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
Image
Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
Will Durant
Image
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