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From barbarism to civilization requires a century from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.

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
Barbarism
Requires
Civilization
Century
Needs

More quotes by Will Durant

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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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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.
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The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West it is whether men can bear to live without God.
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.
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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.
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When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
Will Durant
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Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
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When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
Will Durant
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Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God?
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As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
Will Durant
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History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.
Will Durant
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Drunkenness was in good repute in England till Bloody Mary frowned upon it it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold.
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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.
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Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day
Will Durant
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Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say.
Will Durant
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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.
Will Durant
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Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
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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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