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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
Epicurean
Stoic
Civilization
Dies
Born

More quotes by Will Durant

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There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.
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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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
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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.
Will Durant
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There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
Will Durant
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
Will Durant
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
Will Durant
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Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.
Will Durant
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Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done.
Will Durant
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Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.
Will Durant
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The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.
Will Durant
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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
Will Durant
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It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.
Will Durant
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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
Will Durant
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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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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