Quotes from Will Durant

Nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other….

Knowledge grows, but wisdom, though it can improve with years, does not progress with centuries. I cannot instruct Solomon. So, brave reader, you have fair warning: proceed at your own risk. But I shall be warmed by your company. Will Durant

the royal revenue was doubled from 600 to 1200 livres ($240,000) a day. In his reign the façade of Notre Dame was completed, and the Louvre was built as a fortress to guard the Seine.62 When Philip died (1223) the France of today had been born.

Perhaps, for the common people a rewarding and avenging God is necessary. Bayle had asked, If a society of atheists could subsist? Voltaire answers, Yes, if they are also philosophers. But men are seldom philosophers.

Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being; and the endeavor wherewith a thing seeks to persist in its own being is nothing else than the actual essence of that thing";

My formula for greatness is Amor fati: . . . not only to bear up under every necessity, but to love it.

Know in thyself and All one self-same soul; banish the dream that sunders part from whole.

Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being; and the endeavor wherewith a thing seeks to persist in its own being is nothing else than the actual essence of that thing";65 the power whereby a thing persists is the core and essence of its being.

we do not desire things because they give us pleasure; but they give us pleasure because we desire them;

Genius consists in this, that the knowing faculty has received a considerably greater development than the service of the will demands.

On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.

The fundamental condition of genius is an abnormal predominance of sensibility and irritability over reproductive power.

What crime have these children committed that they should be born? If

citizens could forget, while they went through all the forms of the dead Republic, that they were living under a military monarchy in which force was hidden so long as phrases could rule.

There is, again, a "Multiplication of Effects": one cause may produce a vast variety of results, and help to differentiate the world; a word amiss, like Marie Antoinette's, or an altered telegram at Ems, or a wind at Salamis, may play an endless rôle in history.

That whereby man differs from the lower animals is but small. Most people throw it away; only

I have often wondered that persons who make boast of professing the Christian religion—namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men—should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily toward one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues which they profess, is the readiest criterion of their faith.

Come, brave Diderot, intrepid d'Alembert, ally yourselves; . . . overwhelm the fanatics and the knaves, destroy the insipid declamations, the miserable sophistries, the lying history, . . . the absurdities without number; do not let those who have sense be subjected to those who have none; and the generation which is being born will owe to us its reason and its liberty.

The man who says to me, 'Believe as I do, or God will damn you,' will presently say, 'Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you.'"70 "By what right could a being created free force another to think like himself?"71 "A fanaticism composed of superstition and ignorance has been the sickness of all the centuries.

Our children bring us up by showing us, through imitation, what we really are.

IV. IS MAN A MACHINE? Yes, said Julien Offroy de La Mettrie.

civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.

No people, ancient or modern," said Max Müller, "has given women so high a legal status as did the inhabitants of the Nile Valley."97

justice is the interest of the stronger