Will Durant Quotes

"The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority."
- Will Durant
(Related: Acting, Machine, Majority, Minority, United)

"The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers."
- Will Durant
(Related: Life, Answers, Being, Day, Questions, Will, Wonders, World)

"The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife."
- Will Durant
(Related: Love, Wife, Man, Old, Youth)

"The family is the nucleus of civilization."
- Will Durant
(Related: Family, Civilization)

"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds."
- Will Durant
(Related: People, Trouble, Wishes)

"Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant
(Related: Education, Discovery, Ignorance, Nothing, Now, Years)

"To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say."
- Will Durant
(Related: Nothing)

"Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance."
- Will Durant
(Related: Knowledge, Ignorance)

"The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages."
- Will Durant
(Related: Ego, Machine, Man, Mind, Will)

"There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war."
- Will Durant
(Related: War, Past, Years)

"There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure."
- Will Durant
(Related: Age, Money, Cure, Nothing, Socialism, Will)

"To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy."
- Will Durant
(Related: Art, Diplomacy, Nothing)

"Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent."
- Will Durant
(Related: Truth, Custom, Minority)

"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
(Related: People, Americans, Earth, Events)

"We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway."
- Will Durant
(Related: Freedom, Living)

"Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn."
- Will Durant
(Related: Men)

"When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near."
- Will Durant
(Related: Dictatorship, Liberty)

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
- Will Durant
(Related: History, Nothing)

"Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory."
- Will Durant
(Related: Time, Memory, Mothers)

"Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime."
- Will Durant
(Related: Virtue, Hatred, May, Vice)

"Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal."
- Will Durant
(Related: Nature, Independence)

"As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy."
- Will Durant
(Related: Anarchy, Liberty)

"Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard."
- Will Durant
(Related: History, Money, Man, Will)

"A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist."
- Will Durant

"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos."
- Will Durant
(Related: Civilization, Chaos, Liberty, Order)

"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."
- Will Durant
(Related: Change, Civilization)

"Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity."
- Will Durant
(Related: Civilization, Freedom, Order)

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant
(Related: Education, Discovery, Ignorance)

"Education is the transmission of civilization."
- Will Durant
(Related: Education, Civilization)

"Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art."
- Will Durant
(Related: Art, Science, Philosophy)

"History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice."
- Will Durant
(Related: History, Prejudice, Rest)

"I am not against hasty marriages, where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income."
- Will Durant
(Related: Income)

"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
(Related: Laws, Man, Needs)

"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."
- Will Durant
(Related: Age, Discovery, Freedom, Liberty, Old, Order, Stress, Youth)

"Inquiry is fatal to certainty."
- Will Durant
(Related: Certainty)

"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."
- Will Durant
(Related: Time, People, Country, Fool, May)

"Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul."
- Will Durant
(Related: Soul, Knowledge, Desire, Eye)

"Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law."
- Will Durant
(Related: Law, Man)

"Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions."
- Will Durant
(Related: Environmental)

"Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years."
- Will Durant
(Related: Time, Years)

"Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle."
- Will Durant
(Related: Government, Excess)