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In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry in its decadence, philosophy and logic.

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
Decadence
Mythology
Logic
Youth
Poetry
Produce
Philosophy
People

More quotes by Will Durant

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Civilization is not inherited it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.
Will Durant
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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
Will Durant
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To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.
Will Durant
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To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.
Will Durant
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
Will Durant
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Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game
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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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.
Will Durant
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As to harmonizing the theory of evolution with the Biblical account of creation, I do not believe it can be done, and I do not see why it should be. The story of Genesis is beautiful, and profoundly significant as symbolism: there is no good reason to torture it into conformity with modern theory.
Will Durant
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Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.
Will Durant
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The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
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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Liberty is a luxury of security the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.
Will Durant
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Liberty is a product of order.
Will Durant
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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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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.
Will Durant
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If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
Will Durant
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Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.
Will Durant