The Story of Philosophy Quotes

“as soon as want and suffering permit rest to a man, ennui is at once so near that he necessarily requires diversion," —i. e., more suffering. Even if the socialist Utopia were attained, innumerable evils would be left, because some of them —like strife — are essential to life; and if every evil were removed, and strife were altogether ended, boredom would become as intolerable as pain.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

“This famous doctrine of Ideas, embellished and obscured by the fancy and poetry of Plato, is a discouraging maze to the modern student, and must have offered another severe test to the survivors of many sittings. The Idea of a thing might be the "general idea" of the class to which it belongs (the Idea of John, or Dick, or Harry, is Man) ; or it might be the law or laws according to which the thing operates (the Idea of John would be the reduction of all hig behavior to "natural laws") ; or it might be the perfect purpose and ideal towards which the thing and its class may develop (the Idea of John is the John of Utopia). Very probably the Idea is all of these—idea, law and ideal.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

“But is philosophy stagnant? Science seems always to advance, while philosophy seems always to lose ground. Yet this is only because philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open tp the methods of science—problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields, knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the Unknown (as in metaphysics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy