Quotes from Will Durant

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

The future never just happened. It was created.

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.

It is one of the most culpable oversights of nature that virtue and beauty so often come in separate packages.

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.

[W]orship, if not the child, is at leastthe brother, of fear.

We are what we repeatedly do. Greatness then, is not an act, but a habit

In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.

Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love; the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.

Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, the [bankers] know that history is inflationary.

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.

War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.

Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.

The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

In Constantinople, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in the years 342-343 than by all the persecutions by pagans in the history of Rome.

History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.

History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

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