When I introspect I perceive not merely sensations and ideas but desire, will, ambition, and pride as vital phases of me. Spinoza was right: “desiderium ipsa essentia hominis” – desire is the very essence of man. We are living flames of desire until we admit final defeat. Will is desire expressed in ideas that become actions unless impeded by contrary or substitute desires and ideas. Character is the sum of our desires, fears, propensities, habits, abilities, and ideas.

— Will Durant

Will Durant Quotes

This direct perception, this simple and steady looking-upon a thing, is intuition; not any mystic process, but the most direct examination possible to the human mind.

— Will Durant

To his alert mind and ears, every experience was education.

— Will Durant

A true empiricism is one that sets itself the task of getting as close as possible to the original, of sounding the depths of life, of feeling the pulse of its spirit by a sort of intellectual auscultation”; we “listen in” on the current of life. By direct perception we feel the presence of the mind; by intellectual circumlocution we arrive at the notion that thought is a dance of molecules in the brain. Is there any doubt that intuition here beholds more truly the heart of life?

— Will Durant

Perhaps discipline will be restored in our civilization through the military training required by the challenges of war. The freedom of the part varies with the security of the whole; individualism will diminish in America and England as geographical protection ceases. Sexual license may cure itself through its own excess; our unmoored children may live to see order and modesty become fashionable; clothing will be more stimulating than nudity.

— Will Durant

Morality, like art, is the achievement of unity in diversity; the highest type of man is he who effectively unites in himself the widest variety, complexity, and completeness of life.

— Will Durant

As the contrast between the militant and the industrial types is indicated by inversion of the belief that individuals exist for the benefit of the state into the belief that the state exists for the benefit of individuals; so the contrast between the industrial type and the type likely to be evolved from it is indicated by inversion of the belief that life is for work into the belief that work is for life.

— Will Durant

If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.” How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task.

— Will Durant

A little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.

— Will Durant

Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

— Will Durant

These steeples, everywhere pointing upward, ignoring despair and lifting hope – these lofty city spires or simple chapels in the hills – they rise at every step from the earth to the sky; in every village of every nation on the globe they challenge doubt and invite weary hearts to consolation. Is it all a vain delusion? Is there nothing beyond life but death, and nothing beyond death but decay? We cannot know, but as long as men suffer, those steeples will remain.

— Will Durant

To hate is to acknowledge our inferiority and our fear; we do not hate a foe whom we are confident we can overcome.

— Will Durant

Reason is “man’s imitation of divinity.

— Will Durant

THERE IS A PLEASURE in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.

— Will Durant

Democracy is a luxury of disseminated intelligence, security, and peace.

— Will Durant

Apparently beauty is born in suffering, and wisdom is the child of grief.

— Will Durant

It was woman who gave man agriculture and the home; she domesticated man as she domesticated the sheep and the pig.

— Will Durant

Since practical ability differs from person to person, the majority of such abilities, in nearly all societies, is gathered in a minority of men. The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history.

— Will Durant

He studied the stars, and guided his caravans across mountains and deserts by tracing his route in the sky.

— Will Durant

Consequently – since there is a natural selection of institutions and ideas as well as of organisms and groups – the passage from hunting to agriculture brought a change from tribal property to family property; the most economical unit of production became the unit of ownership. As the family took on more and more a patriarchal form, with authority centralized in the oldest male, property became increasingly individualized, and personal bequest arose.

— Will Durant

Frequently an enterprising individual would leave the family haven, adventure beyond the traditional boundaries, and by hard labor reclaim land from the forest, the jungle or the marsh; such land he guarded jealously as his own, and in the end society recognized his right, and another form of individual property began.

— Will Durant
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