Will Durant Quotes

We must steel ourselves against utopias and be content with a slightly better state.

Every civilization is a fruit from the sturdy tree of barbarism, and falls at the greatest distance from its trunk.

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.

If we rated greatness by the influence of the great, we will say "Muhammad is the greatest of the great in history

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states pr...

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

No man is educated for statesmanship who cannot see his time from the perspective of the past.

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.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science. ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure civilization is, and how precariously it is poised up...

Nobody loves a policeman until he needs one.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

History is mostly guessing the rest is prejudice.

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.

Sixty years ago I knew everything now I know nothing education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

The individual succumbs but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.