524 Quotes by Will Durant
- Author Will Durant
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One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing,"Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt - particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought?There is no philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself.Gnothi seauton, said Socrates: Know thyself.
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Those who desire immortality must pay for it with their lives.
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Reproduction is the ultimate purpose of every organism, and its strongest instinct; for only so can the will conquer death.And to ensure this conquest of death, the will to reproduce is placed almost entirely beyond control of knowledge or reflection: even a philosopher, occasionally, has children.
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But the new generation had tasted the wine of philosophy; and from this time onward the rich youth of Rome went eagerly to Athens and Rhodes to exchange their oldest faith for the newest doubts.
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Hence I think it is that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies,' people at last prefer tyranny to chaos. Equality of power is an unstable condition; men are by nature unequal; and 'he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.' Democracy has still to solve the problem of enlisting the best energies of men while giving to all alike the choice of those, among the trained and fit, by whom they wish to be ruled.
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[N]o language has ever had a word for a virgin man.
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The family is the nucleus of civilization.
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Every civilization is a fruit from the sturdy tree of barbarism, and falls at the greatest distance from its trunk.
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A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.
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