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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Will Durant
Read between
January 3 - August 14, 2025
“You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question for equals in power; the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
“Then democracy comes: the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and power”
“Ruin comes when the trader, whose heart is lifted up by wealth, becomes ruler”
the rule of the guardians shall be a flexible intelligence unbound by precedent.
‘It is unreasonable to wrap up things of little or no value in a precious cover.’”
“we pity not only a thing we have loved, but also one which we judge similar to ourselves”;
Laws against free speech are subversive of all law; for men will not long respect laws which they may not criticize.
The defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power;
“The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not by reason.”
“Dulce est desipere in loco. Woe to philosophers who cannot laugh away their wrinkles. I look upon solemnity as a disease.”
I renounce a study which overwhelms the mind without illuminating it.”
The King decreed that this Frenchman who dared to think of himself as a man first and a Frenchman afterward should never put foot upon the soil of France again.
Either God can prevent evil and he will not; or he wishes to prevent it and he cannot.
To be free is to be subject to nothing but the laws.”
No one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes; to read your book makes one long to go on all fours. As, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it.”
‘Wilt thou break,’ said he, ‘this pretty statue because it is not wholly composed of gold and diamonds?’”
When I am attacked I fight like a devil; I yield to no one; but at bottom I am a good devil, and I end by laughing.”
“I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition. (Signed) Voltaire. February 28, 1778.”
we learn anew every day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he steals enough.
Like a sensible pessimist, he had avoided that pitfall of optimists—the attempt to make a living with the pen.
Life is short, but truth works far and lives long; let us speak the truth.
de vivis nil nisi bonum—of the living let us say nothing but good.
The intellect may seem at times to lead the will, but only as a guide leads his master; the will “is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.”
“Men are only apparently drawn from in front; in reality they are pushed from behind”; they think they are led on by what they see, when in truth they are driven on by what they feel,—by instincts of whose operation they are half the time unconscious.
youth without beauty has still always attraction; beauty without youth has none
“Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man is contributes more to his happiness than what he has.”
Even fame is folly; “other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness.”
The secret of genius, then, lies in the clear and impartial perception of the objective, the essential, and the universal.
The object of science is the universal that contains many particulars; the object of art is the particular that contains a universal.
the intellect divides everything, intuition unites everything;
“the world,” as Horace Walpole said, “is a comedy for those who think, but a tragedy for those who feel.”
He was so busy analyzing and describing life that he had no time to live it.
If he has been pictured here rather frankly, it is because we love a great man better when we know his faults, and suspiciously dislike him when he shines in unmitigated perfection.
The proper field and function of philosophy lies in the summation and unification of the results of science.
Amor fati:
“Look at these superfluous! They acquire riches and become poorer thereby”;
“I love him who willeth the creation of something beyond himself, and then perisheth,” said Zarathustra.
Rousseau’s definition of history as “the art of choosing, from among many lies, that one which most resembles the truth.”
“In Aristotle the conception of human nature is perfectly sound: everything ideal has a natural basis, and everything natural an ideal development.
pragmatism asks, What are its consequences?—and turns the face of thought to action and the future.
