“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”
Epilogue: "Why Rome Fell", p. 665
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944)
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Will Durant 85
American historian, philosopher and writer 1885–1981Related quotes

Remaking the world, The Speeches of Frank N.D. Buchman, Blandford Presss 1947, revised 1958, p. 126
Quotes on the war of ideas
Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 334

3 May 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Context: I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.
"Down the River", p. 148
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Cited in The Effects of Mass Immigration On Canadian Living Standards and Society (2009). ed. Grubel, The Frasier Institute, pp. 202-203 ISBN 088975246X, 9780889752467
1980s, How Democracies Perish (1983)

“Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins.”
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 40
Context: The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history. Mind can never be free of matter. Only by mind imagining itself free can culture advance. The mother-cults, by reconciling man to nature, entrapped him in matter. Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins. Genesis is rigid and unjust, but it gave man hope as a man. It remade the world by male dynasty, canceling the power of mothers.

Attributed in Sholto Percy and Reuben Percy, The Percy Anecdotes (1826), Vol. 1, p. 55 http://books.google.com/books?id=5oJUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA55