Will Durant > Quotes

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
― Will Durant

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
― Will Durant

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
― Will Durant

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. . . let us be above such transparent egotism.”
― Will Durant

“We are what we repeatedly do. Greatness then, is not an act, but a habit”
― Will Durant

“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean”
― Will Durant

“How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day”
― Will Durant

“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean. At its cradle (to repeat a thoughtful adage) religion stands, and philosophy accompanies it to the grave.
In the beginning of all cultures a strong religious faith conceals and softens the nature of things, and gives men courage to bear pain and hardship patiently; at every step the gods are with them, and will not let them perish, until they do. Even then a firm faith will explain that it was the sins of the people that turned their gods to an avenging wrath; evil does not destroy faith, but strengthens it. If victory comes, if war is forgotten in security and peace, then wealth grows; the life of the body gives way, in the dominant classes, to the life of the senses and the mind; toil and suffering are replaced by pleasure and ease; science weakens faith even while thought and comfort weaken virility and fortitude. At last men begin to doubt the gods; they mourn the tragedy of knowledge, and seek refuge in every passing delight.
Achilles is at the beginning, Epicurus at the end. After David comes Job, and after Job, Ecclesiastes.”
― Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

“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, The Lessons of History

“Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.”
― Will Durant

“Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.”
― Will Durant

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
― Will Durant

“And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“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 Lessons of History

“Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice. ”
― Will Durant

“When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.”
― Will Durant

“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”
― 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, The Lessons of History

“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

“Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.”
― Will Durant

“Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.”
― Will Durant, Caesar and Christ

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

“In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“All that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting for us. So is Aristotle. Spinoza is there and so is Kats. Shelly and Byron adn Sam Johnson are there waiting to tell us their magnificent stories. All you have to do is walk in the library door and the great company open their arms to you. They are so happy to see you that they come out with you into the street and to your home. And they do what hardly any friend will-- they are silent when you wish to think.”
― 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, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“يقول شوبنهاور: لاشيء يبعث فينا الانسجام أكثر من المعرفة الدقيقة، وكلما ازددنا معرفة لعواطفنا كلما قلّت سيطرتها علينا. ولاشيء يحمينا أكثر من السيطرة على نفوسنا، فإذا أردت أن تخضع كل شيء لنفسك أخضع نفسك لعقلك. إن قاهر العالم لا يثير فينا الإعجاب كما يثيره قاهر نفسه”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers