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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
Requires
Civilization
Century
Needs
Barbarism

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Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.
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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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Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.
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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.
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In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
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The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.
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History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
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In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
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Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
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The Institutional Church (ecclesia) has killed only two kinds of people: Those who do not believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and those who do.
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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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Christianity did not destroy paganism it adopted it.
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Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
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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.
Will Durant
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Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.
Will Durant
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Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.
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A cat has a reputation to protect. If it had a halo, it would be worn cocked to one side.
Will Durant
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
Will Durant
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
Will Durant
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Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
Will Durant