Will Durant Quotes - Page 6

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

In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Time sanctifies everything; even the most arrant theft in the hands of the robber's grandchildren becomes sacred and inviolable property.

If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.

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.

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.

Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.

History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.

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

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

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.

The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.

All deductions having been made, democracy has done less harm, and more good, than any other form of government. It gave to human existence a zest and camaraderie that outweighed its pitfalls and defects. It gave to thought and science and enterprise the freedom essential to their operation and growth. It broke down the walls of privilege and class, and in each generation it raised up ability from every rank and place.

I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.

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