1885-1981, American Historian, Essayist
Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.
William J. Durant – [Inflation]
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
William J. Durant – [Civilization]
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.
William J. Durant – [Prejudice]
Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance.
William J. Durant – [Education]
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.
William J. Durant – [Government]
Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
William J. Durant – [Certainty]
It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
William J. Durant – [Country]
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
William J. Durant – [Knowledge]
Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
William J. Durant – [Morality]
Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
William J. Durant – [Equality]
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
William J. Durant – [Action]
No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
William J. Durant – [Haste]
Nothing is new except arrangement.
William J. Durant – [Plagiarism]
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
William J. Durant – [History and Historians]
The family is the nucleus of civilization.
William J. Durant – [Family]
The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes, rather than their minds.
William J. Durant – [Mind]
There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
William J. Durant – [Communism and Socialism]
Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
William J. Durant – [Discipline]
We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.
William J. Durant – [Freedom]
When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
William J. Durant – [Order]