Quotes from book
The Story of Civilization

Name: The Story of Civilization
Author: Will Durant

The Story of Civilization, by husband and wife Will and Ariel Durant, is an 11-volume set of books covering Western history for the general reader.

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

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Epilogue: "Why Rome Fell", p. 665
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944)

“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

“If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and yearns for that government which governs least. If he asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), I - Our Oriental Heritage (1935), Ch. III : The Political Elements of Civilization, p. 21
Context: If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and yearns for that government which governs least. If he asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous. In the simplest societies there is hardly any government. Primitive hunters tend to accept regulation only when they join the hunting pack and prepare for action. The Bushmen usually live in solitary families; the Pygmies of Africa and the simplest natives of Australia admit only temporarily of political organization, and then scatter away to their family groups; the Tasmanians had no chiefs, no laws, no regular government; the Veddahs of Ceylon formed small circles according to family relationship, but had no government; the Kubus of Sumatra "live without men in authority" every family governing itself; the Fuegians are seldom more than twelve together; the Tungus associate sparingly in groups of ten tents or so; the Australian "horde" is seldom larger than sixty souls. In such cases association and cooperation are for special purposes, like hunting; they do not rise to any permanent political order.

“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage page 459.
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), I - Our Oriental Heritage (1935)
Context: The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.

“In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization

“I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Preface
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957)

“On the maturation of a woman* "She is a woman now, and not an idle girl, not a domestic ornament or a sexual convenience anymore."”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), p.g. 14

“Nothing should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), I - Our Oriental Heritage (1935)

“There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 30, part 1, p. 652.

“On young love* "Here is a fulfillment of long centuries of civilization and culture; here, in romantic love, more than the triumph of thought or the victories of power is the topmost reach of human beings."”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), p.g. 8

“Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

As quoted in Midnight by Dean Koontz
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), XI - The Age of Napoleon (1975)

“No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), II - Life of Greece (1939), Ch. XII : Work and Wealth in Athens, p. 277 http://books.google.com/books?id=l2wgAAAAMAAJ&q=%22no+man+who+is+in+a+hurry+is+quite+civilized%22&pg=PA277#v=onepage

“I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Preface
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957)
Context: I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.

“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

“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)