The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time

by Will Durant

No, the real history of man is not in prices and wages, nor in elections and battles, nor in the even tenor of the common man; it is in the lasting contributions made by geniuses to the sum of human civilization and culture.

I see men standing on the edge of knowledge, and holding the light a little farther ahead; men carving marble into forms ennobling men; men molding peoples into better instruments of greatness; men making a language of music and music out of lan-guage; men dreaming of finer lives-and living them. Here is a process of creation more vivid than in any myth; a godliness more real than in any creed.

If ideas do not determine history, inventions do; and inventions are determined by ideas.

Yes, it is true that this victory of man over matter has not yet been matched with any kindred victory of man over himself.

Education is the reason why we behave like human beings. We are hardly born human; we are born ridiculous and malodorous animals;