Quotes from Ariel Durant

The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities.

If you have character, endeavor, personality, courage and the capacity for concentrated labor, you will do what is your destiny – and, perhaps, even do it well.

The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization.

History is subject to geology.

Man, not earth, makes civilization.

Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign.

H]istory is baroque.

Every advance in the complexity of the economy puts an added premium upon superior ability, and intensifies the concentration of wealth, responsibility and political power.

He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much grief.

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

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilised.

Man, not the earth, makes civilization.

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

If you have character, endeavor, personality, courage and the capacity for concentrated labor, you will do what is your destiny – and, perhaps, even do it well.