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
forever knows repeats
Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.
harmony strife universal
To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.
civilization missing needs
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.
doe individual mankind
The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.
insecurity culture chaos
Cultural creation... begins where chaos and insecurity end.
haste action foresight
Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
husband divorce men
The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.
happiness world
The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.
beautiful believe biblical
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.
philosophy doubt belief
Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.
past men color
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.
acceptance assumption snares
The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.
civilization stoic born
A civilization is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
secret bankers fluctuation
Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.