Will Durant Quotes

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.

"إن معظم التقدم الذي أصاب الحياة الإقتصادية في المجتمع البدائي كان يعزى للمرأة أكثر مما يعزى للرجل، فبينما ظل الرجل قروناً مستمسكاً بأساليبه القديمة من صيد ورعي، كانت هي تطور الزراعة على مقربة من محال السكنى، وتباشر تلك الفنون المنزلية التي أصبحت فيما بعد أهم ما يعرف الإنسان من صناعات.
ومن "شجرة الصوف" - كما كان الإغريق يسمون نبات القطن - جعلت المرأة تغزل الخيط وتنسج الثياب القطنية، وهي التي - على أرجح الظن - تقدمت بفنون الحياكة والنسج وصناعة السلال والخزف وأشغال الخشب والبناء، بل هل التي قامت بالتجارة في حالات كثيرة.
والمرأة هي التي طورت الدار، واستطاعت بالتدريج أن تضيف الرجل إلى قائمة ما استأنسته من حيوان، ودربته على أوضاع المجتمع وضروراته التي هي من المدنية أساسها النفسي وملاطها الذي يمسك أجزاء البناء، لكن لما تقدمت الزراعة وزاد طرحها، أخذ الجنس الأقوى يستولي على زمامها شيئاً فشيئاً."

يقول سبينوزا: وعندما يبدو لنا أي شيء في الطبيعة مضحكاً أو سخيفاً، غامضاً أو شراً فذلك لأننا ليست لدينا سوى معرفة قليلة بالأشياء، وأننا جاهلون بنظام الطبيعة وتماسكها ككل واحد، ولأننا نريد أن تجري الأشياء وفقاً لتفكيرنا وآرائنا، مع أن ما يعتبره عقلنا سيئاً أو شراً ليس شراً أو سيئاً بالنسبة إلى نظام الطبيعة وقوانينها الشاملة الكلية. بل بالنسبة إلى قوانين طبيعتنا الخاصة المنفصلة. أما بالنسبة إلى كلمة الخير والشر فإنها لا تدل على شيء إيجابي في حد ذاتها، لأن الشيء الواحد نفسه قد يكون في وقت واحد خيراً أو شراً، أو لا هذا ولا ذاك كالموسيقى مثلاً فإنها خير بالنسبة إلى المنقبض النفس وشر بالنسبة إلى النائح الحزين الذي فقد شخصاً عزيزاً عليه. وهي ليست خيراً أو شراً بالنسبة إلى الميت

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself.

قوة التقاليد تتناسب تناسباً عكسياً مع كثرة القوانين، كما أن قوة الغريزة تتناسب تناسباً عكسياً مع كثرة الأفكار

As to the people they have no understanding, and only repeat what their rulers are pleased to tell them” (Protagoras, 317); to get a doctrine accepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes, whose comedies attacked almost every new idea). Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so “hungry for honey,” that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the “protector of the people” rises to supreme power (565).

The rise of philosophy, then, often heralds the decay of a civilization. Speculation begins with nature and begets naturalism; it passes to man—first as a psychological mystery and then as a member of society—and begets individualism. Philosophers do not always desire these results; but they achieve them. They feel themselves the unwilling enemies of the state: they think of men in terms of personality while the state thinks of men in terms of social mechanism. Some philosophers would gladly hold their peace, but there is that in them which will out; and when philosophers speak, gods and dynasties fall. Most states have had their roots in heaven, and have paid the penalty for it: the twilight of the gods is the afternoon of states. Every civilization comes at last to the point where the individual, made by speculation conscious of himself as an end per se, demands of the state, as the price of its continuance, that it shall henceforth enhance rather than exploit his capacities. Philosophers sympathize with this demand, the state almost always rejects it: therefore civilizations come and civilizations go. The history of philosophy is essentially an account of the efforts great men have made to avert social disintegration by building up natural moral sanctions to take the place of the supernatural sanctions which they themselves have destroyed. To find—without resorting to celestial machinery—some way of winning for their people social coherence and permanence without sacrificing plasticity and individual uniqueness to regimentation,—that has been the task of philosophers, that is the task of philosophers.

Custom gives the same stability to the group that heredity and instinct give to the species, and habit to the individual. It is the routine that keeps men sane; for if there were no grooves along which thought and action might move with unconscious ease, the mind would be perpetually hesitant, and would soon take refuge in lunacy.

In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.

See him, the newborn, dirty but marvelous, ridiculous in actuality, infinite in possibility, capable of that ultimate miracle, growth.

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.

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.

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

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.