Quotes by 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.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

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.

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.

Inquiry is fatal to 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.

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

Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.

The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

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

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.

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

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.

Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.

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

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.

When people ask me to compare the 20th century to older civilizations, I always say the same thing: The situation is normal.

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

Perhaps our supercilious disgust with existence is a cover for a secret disgust with ourselves; we have botched and bungled our lives, and we cast the blame upon the environment or the world, which have no tongues to utter a defense. The mature man accepts the natural limitations of life; he does not expect Providence to be prejudiced in his favor; he does not ask for loaded dice to play the game of life. He knows, with Carlyle, that there is no sense in vilifying the sun because it will not light our cigars. And perhaps, if we are clever enough to help it, the sun will even do that; and this vast neutral cosmos may turn out to be a pleasant place enough if we bring a little sunshine of our own to help it out. In truth, the world is neither with us or against us; it is but raw material in our hands, and can be heaven or hell according to what we are.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.

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.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

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

History is mostly guessing the rest is prejudice.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

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

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

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