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Will Durant [1885-1981] American

Rank: 101
Historian, Writer

William James "Will" Durant was 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.

Education, History, Knowledge, Age, Art, Communication, Environmental, Family, Freedom, Good, Government, Great, Hope, Independence, Love, Mom, Nature, Time, Truth, Wisdom

Quote	Tags	Rank
To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.	Art, Communication	101
The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.	Hope	102
When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.		103
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.	Good	104
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.	Age, Freedom, Great	105
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.	Knowledge	106
Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.	Independence, Nature	107
The family is the nucleus of civilization.	Family	108
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.	Education	109
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.	Time	110
Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.	Knowledge	111
The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.	Love	112
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.	History	113
Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.	Mom	114
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.		115
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.	Government	116
Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.	Truth	117
Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.	Education	118
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.		119
Inquiry is fatal to certainty.		120
Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.	History	121
Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.		122
Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.		123
Education is the transmission of civilization.	Education	124
As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.		125
Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.		126
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.		201
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.		202
There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.		203
The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.		204
Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.	Environmental	205
There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.		206
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.		207
History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.		208
We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.		209
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.		210
A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.		211
Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.		212
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.	Wisdom	213
I am not against hasty marriages, where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.		214
The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.		215
Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.		216
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.		217

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