Talk:Will Durant

Unsourced

These require citations to adequate sources before being placed into the main article.

Quote needs the exact source : Will Durant, American Historian says: " India is the mother of democracy" He points out that the Greek Assembly, the Roman Agora or the German Moot, the antecedents of modern democracy, were derived from the Indian institution known as Samiti or Sabha recorded in the Vedas. In fact, there was a democratic deity called Samajnana to whom the last hymn of the Rig Veda makes salutation." (source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p.137).

• A civilization is not conquered from without until it is destroyed from within.

Epilogue—Why Rome fell", The Story of Civilization, 3 Caesar And Christ

• Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

• Drunkenness was in good repute in England till "Bloody Mary" frowned upon it; it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold.

• Education is the transmission of civilization.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.

• India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.

• Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

• 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.

• Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.

• Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.

• One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.

• One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

• Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.

• Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

• The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.

• The family is the nucleus of civilization.

• The future never just happened. It was created.

• The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

• 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.

• The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

• The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

• There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.

• Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.

• To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.

• To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.

• Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

• We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.

• When people ask me to compare the 20th century to older civilizations, I always say the same thing: "The situation is normal."

• Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

• History is always repeating itself, but each time the price goes up.

• From the lips of the victors, liberty means the right of the strong and the clever to abuse and exploit those less fortunate than themselves.
  • I recall reading this, or something very close to it, in The Story of Civilization, but I have not been able to go back and locate it. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

These 2 were misplaced in The Story of Philosophy

They are not found within any edition to which I have access. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:37, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

• When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

• Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
  • This might be a loose paraphrase of statements elsewhere in Durant's works.

With Ariel Durant

• Mozart began his works in childhood and a childlike quality lurked in his compositions until it dawned on him that the Requiem he was writing for a stranger was his own.

Geological Consent

I moved the geological consent quotation ("Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.") from the Unsourced section here to the Sourced section in the article. I'm relying on an article on About.com (archaeology.about.com/od/quotations/qt/quote84.htm) as the source, though I haven't seen a copy of the January 1946 edition of Ladie's Home Journal firsthand...

--Kittell (talk) 20:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Recent additions by User:Bocherga88 undone

Recent additions by User:Bocherga88 have been undone because they resemble the original text, but the quotes are no exact match

For example the first quote of the total added in 69 edits is:

• I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space as I can of the contributions that genius and labor have made to the cultural heritage of mankind- to chronicle and contemplate, in their causes, character, and effects, the advances of invention, the varieties of economic organization, the experiments in government, the aspirations of religion, the wisdom of philosophy and the achievements of art.

Yet the original text is (with missing text bolded):

• I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to the cultural heritage of mankind— to chronicle and contemplate, in their causes, character and effects, the advances of invention, the varieties of economic organization, the experiments in government, the aspirations of religion, the mutations of morals and manners, the masterpieces of literature, the development of science, the wisdom of philosophy, and the achievement of art

Another example: The end of the fourth quote:

• ... There are no racial conditions to civilization. It may appear on any continent and in any color: It is not the great race that makes the civilization, it is the great civilization that makes the people; circumstances geographical and economic create a culture, and the culture creates a type.

Yet the original text is (with missing text bolded):

• ... There are no racial conditions to civilization. It may appear on any continent and in any color: at Pekin or Delhi, at Memphis or Babylon, at Ravenna or London, in Peru or Yucatan. It is not the great race that makes the civilization, it is the great civilization that makes the people; circumstances geographical and economic create a culture, and the culture creates a type.

Until this matter is resolved, I think it is better, to (temporarily) removed all additions. -- Mdd (talk) 16:19, 3 February 2017 (UTC) P.S. Contributions by User:Bocherga88 to other lemma's have been removed for the same reason.

I also think many of these additions go overboard in creating a sort of condensed book, rather than a collection of individually quoteworthy quotes. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:25, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree, the 200k he added originated from one book (and only from the first 14 of the 31 chapters). He stopped adding more work after I notified him about WQ:LOQ two weeks ago. -- Mdd (talk) 16:49, 3 February 2017 (UTC)