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The Lessons of History QUOTES

The Lessons of History QUOTES

1 " Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

2 " We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

3 " In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

4 " History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

5 " you can’t fool all the people all the time,” but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

6 " The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

7 " In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

8 " Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

9 " The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

10 " It is not the race that makes the civilization, it is the civilization that makes the people: circumstances geographical, economic, and political create a culture, and the culture creates a human type. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

11 " We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic—a moral code independent of religion—strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities? "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

12 " Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce—except in war, when they are ranked according to their ability to destroy. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

13 " When the universe has crushed him man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

14 " History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing. The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

15 " The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

16 " Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. “Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

17 " If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword. If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

18 " Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

19 " So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it—perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History

20 " Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes men unequally valuable to their group. "

― Will Durant , The Lessons of History