Famous Quotes

Quotes by Will Durant

• Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.
• Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
• Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.
• Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
• Education is the transmission of civilization.
• Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
• Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.
• History is mostly guessing the rest is prejudice.
• 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.
• 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.
• Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
• Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
• One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
• Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
• Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
• Sixty years ago I knew everything now I know nothing education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
• The family is the nucleus of civilization.
• The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
• There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.
• There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
• 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.
• Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
• 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.
• We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.