Will Durant Men Quotations

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

If man 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.

Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard

The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilised.

Man, not the earth, makes civilization.

And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.

As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.

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.

Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.

Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.

Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.

Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all.

Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done.

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.

An emperor knows how to govern when poets are free to make verses, people to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble at taxes, students to learn lessons aloud, workmen to praise their skill and seek work, people to speak of anything, and old men to find fault with everything.

Can a civilization hold together if man abandons his faith in God?

Never put a man in the wrong. He will hold it against you forever.

Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational; and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.

The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.

Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals

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.

Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths

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.

The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West; it is whether men can bear to live without God.