Quote

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

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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
Magic
Moves
Perhaps
Passed
Modern
Ancient
Moving
Remain
Away
Sea
Sorcery
Stills
Moved
Superstition
Still
Civilization
Underneath
Reason
Works
Superstitions

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History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
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Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.
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The future never just happened. It was created.
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India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
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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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A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
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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.
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There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.
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Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.
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The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.
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History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.
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Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals
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The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
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Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.
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Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
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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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Civilizations come and go they conquer the earth and crumble into dust but faith survives every desolation.
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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.
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To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
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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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