Will Ariel Durant Quotes & Sayings

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it. — Ariel Durant

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. — Ariel Durant

Mozart began his works in childhood and a childlike quality lurked in his compositions until it dawned on him that the Requiem he was writing for s a stranger was his own. — Ariel Durant

When his apprenticeship was finished (the candidate for Knighthood) was received into the Knightly Order by a ritual of sacramental awe ... — Ariel Durant

The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. — Ariel Durant

The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization. — Ariel Durant

We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities. — Ariel Durant

Historians Will and Ariel Durant have written in The Story of Civilization: The Reformation that at the time of Luther, "a gallon of beer per day was the usual allowance per person, even for nuns." This may help to explain why beer figures so prominently in the life and writings of the great reformer. He was German, after all, and he lived at a time when beer was the European drink of choice. Moreover, having been freed from what he considered to be a narrow and life-draining religious legalism, he stepped into the world ready to enjoy its pleasures to the glory of God. For Luther, beer flowed best in a vibrant Christian life. — Stephen Mansfield

Today's rebel is tomorrow's tyrant. — Ariel Durant

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity. — Ariel Durant

Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed. — Ariel Durant

Education is the transmission of civilization. — Ariel Durant

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilised. — Ariel Durant