Michael > Michael's Quotes

“Why is it that great men so often have mediocrities for their offspring? Is it because the gamble of the genes that produced them—the commingling of ancestral traits and biological possibilities—was but a chance, and could not be expected to recur? Or is it because the genius exhausts in thought and toil the force that might have gone to parentage, and leaves only his diluted blood to his heirs? Or is it that children decay under ease, and early good fortune deprives them of the stimulus to ambition and growth?”
― Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

“Custom gives the same stability to the group that heredity and instinct give to the species, and habit to the individual. It is the routine that keeps men sane; for if there were no grooves along which thought and action might move with unconscious ease, the mind would be perpetually hesitant, and would soon take refuge in lunacy.”
― Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

“Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.”
― Will Durant, The Lessons of History

“When liberty destroys order, the hunger for order will destroy liberty.”
― Will Durant

“Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization.”
― Will Durant, The Lessons of History

“So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition.”
― Will Durant, The Lessons of History