1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes
page 2

William James "Will" Durant was an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He became best known for his work The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy , described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy".He conceived of philosophy as total perspective or seeing things sub specie totius . He sought to unify and humanize the great body of historical knowledge, which had grown voluminous and become fragmented into esoteric specialties, and to vitalize it for contemporary application.The Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.



Wikipedia  

✵ 5. November 1885 – 7. November 1981   •   Other names ویل دورانت
Will Durant photo
Will Durant: 85   quotes 30   likes

Will Durant Quotes

“Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates.”

Will Durant

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 1 : Our life begins

Life , Suffering

“Wisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?”

Will Durant

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

Love , Making love , Wisdom

“The principle of the family was mutual aid; but the principle of society is competition, the struggle for existence, the elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong.”

Will Durant

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

Family , Strong

“Youth is learning to read (which is all that one learns in school), and is learning where and how to find what he may later need to know (which is the best of the arts that he acquires in college). Nothing learned from a book is worth anything until it is used and verified in life; only then does it begin to affect behavior and desire. It is Life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.”

Will Durant

Fallen Leaves (2014)

School , Behavior , Reading , Learning

“Man is as young as the risks he takes.”

Will Durant

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

“See him, the newborn, dirty but marvelous, ridiculous in actuality, infinite in possibility, capable of that ultimate miracle, growth.”

Will Durant

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 1 : Our life begins

“Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.”

Will Durant

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 1 : Our life begins

Happiness , Children , Fools , Truth

“To all Christian governments Christianity was not a rule of means but a means of rule; Christ was for the people, Machiavelli was preferred by the kings. The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would civilize the state?”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), Chapter 6, p. 229

Christ , People

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.”

Will Durant

We Have a Right To Be Happy Today https://web.archive.org/web/20130106111821/http://www.willdurant.com/youth.htm, commencement address at the Webb School of Claremont, California (7 June 1958)

Way

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.'”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

Source: The Story of Philosophy (1926), p. 87. The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7

Soul , Time , Happiness , Spring

“Both Stoicism and Epicureanism — the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure — were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved; precisely as the stoicism of Schopenhauer and the despondent epicureanism of Renan were in the nineteenth century the symbols of a shattered revolution and a broken France.”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Pleasure , Forgetting , Happiness , Effort

“In the face of warfare and inevitable death, there is no wisdom but in ataraxia, “to look on all things with a mind at peace"."”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

Here, clearly, the old pagan joy of life is gone, and an almost exotic spirit touches a broken lyre. History, which is nothing if not humorous, was never to facetious as when she gave to this abstemious and epic pessimist the name of Epicurean.
The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Peace , Death , Wisdom

“Great organizers, as much as inevitable slaves, tend to stoic moods: it is difficult to be either master or servant if one is sensitive.”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Mood

“Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 28, Part 5 (Footnote 2)

Future , Faith , Religion , Communication