Will Durant
Will Durant
William James "Will" Durantwas an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy, described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy"...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 November 1885
religious father house
The failure of the reformation to capture France had left for the Frenchmen no half-way house between infallibility and infidelity; and while the intellect of Germany and England moved leisurely in the lines of religious evolution, the mind of France leaped from the hot faith which had massacred the Huguenots to cold hostility with which La Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach, and Diderot turned upon the religion of the fathers.
views concentration-of-wealth economic-history
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.
civilization dust earth
Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.
past rely-upon police
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.
night government hands
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.
civilization history ruins
The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.
pride wish proud
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.
civilization apathy decay
[H]istory assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.
work men haste
No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
achievement doe pale
Knowledge that does not generate achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
ignorance desert mirages
Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
time years four
Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
hatred may vices
Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
knowing interesting suffering
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.