“It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it.”
“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”
Will Durant
“The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.”
Will Durant
“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 quie...”
Will Durant
“Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.”
Will Durant
“I felt more keenly than before the need of a philosophy that would do justice to the infinite vitality of nature. In the inexhaustible activity of the atom, in the endless resourcefulness of plants, i...”
Will Durant