110+ Will Durant Quotes On History, Education And Civilization

Will Durant was an American historian, writer, and philosopher. He is best known for writing the popular 'The Story of Civilization' series, which was a comprehensive overview of world history. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for his book 'Rousseau and Revolution'. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Will Durant on history, education, civilization.

Top 10 Will Durant Quotes

1. To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
2. Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day
3. Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
4. The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
5. The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
6. We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.
7. If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
8. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
9. The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.
10. Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.

Will Durant Image Quotes

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul. — Will Durant

Will Durant Short Quotes

• The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.
• Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.
• Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.
• When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
• Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
• Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a good thing to say.
• Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
• Caesar's armies marched on vegetarian foods.
• Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
• Nothing is new except arrangement.

Will Durant Quotes About History

Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus. You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary. — Will Durant

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again. — Will Durant

The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history. — Will Durant

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

The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws. — Will Durant

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion. — Will Durant

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness. — Will Durant

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard. — Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes About Education

Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. — Will Durant

Education is the transmission of civilization. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

Education is the transformation of civilisation — Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes About Civilization

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

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. — Will Durant

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day. — Will Durant

In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply. — Will Durant

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized. — Will Durant

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

Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change. — Will Durant

[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely. — Will Durant

For you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrificed in the turbulence of change. — Will Durant

A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean. — Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes About India

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system. — Will Durant

India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes About People

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

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

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

In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

Communism is the opiate of the people. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes About Mind

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

Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution' - this was left for lesser minds. — Will Durant

Never mind your happiness; do your duty. — Will Durant

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself. — Will Durant

Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real. — Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes About Freedom

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. — Will Durant

Freedom and equality are naturan born enemies. — Will Durant

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

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. — Will Durant

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty. — Will Durant

The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet. — Will Durant

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway. — Will Durant

The victors called the revolution a triumph of liberty; but now and then liberty in the slogans of the strong means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak. — Will Durant

Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way. — Will Durant

If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all. — Will Durant

Will Durant Famous Quotes And Sayings

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

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

In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty. — Will Durant

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

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

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

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. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

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

I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality. — Will Durant

Friends are helpful not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us; Through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game — Will Durant

We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution. — Will Durant

So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

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

Every state begins in compulsion; but the habits of obedience become the content of conscience, and soon every citizen thrills with loyalty to the flag. The citizen is right; for however the state begins, it soon becomes an indispensable prop to order. — Will Durant

It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world. — Will Durant

How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself. — Will Durant

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles. — Will Durant

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

Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death. — Will Durant

In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line. — Will Durant

There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. — Will Durant

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

Civilizaton is the interval between Ice Ages. — Will Durant

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife. — Will Durant

As to harmonizing the theory of evolution with the Biblical account of creation, I do not believe it can be done, and I do not see why it should be. The story of Genesis is beautiful, and profoundly significant as symbolism: there is no good reason to torture it into conformity with modern theory. — Will Durant

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. — Will Durant

Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand Unshaken when I fall; that I may know The shattered fragments of my song will come At last to finer melody in you; That I may tell my heart that you begin Where passing I leave off, and fathom more. — Will Durant

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn. — Will Durant

If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride. — Will Durant

Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power. — Will Durant

Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God? — Will Durant

To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things. — Will Durant

It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages. — Will Durant

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all. — Will Durant

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

We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity; while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution; and change comes over them only in the night, unseen. — Will Durant

Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ. — Will Durant

I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process — Will Durant

That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. — Will Durant

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. — Will Durant

The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past. — Will Durant

The finger that turns the dial rules the air. — Will Durant

As long as there is poverty there will be gods. — Will Durant

Life Lessons by Will Durant

1. Will Durant's life teaches us to never stop learning and to strive to understand the world around us. He dedicated his life to studying the history of civilizations and wrote over 30 books on the subject.
2. He also taught us to appreciate the beauty of the world and to take joy in the small things. He believed that life should be filled with love, laughter, and adventure.
3. Finally, Durant taught us to be humble and to recognize that we are all part of a larger story. He believed that understanding our place in history could help us to make better decisions in the present.