Will Durant: Use

Will Durant was American historian, philosopher and writer. Explore interesting quotes on use.
Will Durant: 170   quotes 30   likes

“The issuance of this guaranteed currency promoted the profession and operations of finance. The older Romans used temples as their banks, as we use banks as our temples; and the state continued to the end to use its strongly built shrines as repositories for public funds, perhaps on the theory that religious scruples would help discourage robbery.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 4, Part 6

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“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.”

Will Durant

The Case for India (1931)

Way , Democracy , Communication , Mathematics

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

Will Durant

The Case for India (1931)

Love , Understanding

“Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.”

Will Durant

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

God , Happiness , Making love

“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

“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

“I know how unfashionable it is now to acknowledge in life or history any genius loftier than ourselves. Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. … Since it is contrary to good manners to exalt ourselves, we achieve the same result by slyly indicating how inferior are the great men of the earth. In some of us, perhaps, it is a noble and merciless asceticism, which would root out of our hearts the last vestige of worship and adoration, lest the old gods should return and terrify us again. For my part, I cling to this final religion, and discover in it a content and stimulus more lasting than came from the devotional ecstasies of youth.”

Will Durant

The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time (2002) edited by John Little, Ch. 1 : The Shameless Worship of Heroes

God , Religion , History , Dead

“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)

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