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Will Durant

William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for "The Story of Civilization," 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for "The Story of Philosophy," written in 1926, which one observer described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."
■Will Durant
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"At any moment a comet may come too close to the earth and set our little globe turning topsy-turvy in a hectic course, or choke its men and fleas with fumes or heat; or a fragment of the...
■Civilization
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In 1870, Heinrich Schliemann went to the Troad, the northwest corner of Asia Minor­, and made up his mind, against all current scholarly opinion, that Priam's Troy lay buried under the hill called Hissarlik... In the year...
■Civilization
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It is foolish to take sides in disputes, or seek some other place or mode of living, or to envy the future or the past; all desire is delusion. Even life is an uncertain...
■Books
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Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Will Durant and me as we contemplate bibliophilic exuberance. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher "If I were rich I would have many books,...
■Imagination
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"Saddest of all is a poem engraved upon a slab now in the Leyden Museum, and dating back to 2200 B.C. Carpe diem, it sings—snatch the day! 
■Civilization
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This is the essential diagnosis of our time. It is not merely great wars that have plunged us into pessimism, much...
■Character
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(Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Will Durant as he examines the importance of history in human character.—W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher)
■Civilization
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A certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals...
■Imagination
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Morals are soon endowed with religious sanctions because mystery and supernaturalism lend a weight that can never attach to things empirically known and genetically understood; men are more easily ruled by imagination than by science. — Will and Ariel Durant, The...
■Books
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Why do we love Plato? Because Plato himself was a lover: lover of comrades, lover of the intoxication of dialectical revelry, passionate seeker of the elusive reality behind thoughts and things. We love...
■History
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Will Durant The very excess of our present paganism may warrant some hope that it will not long endure; for usually excess generates its opposite. One of the most regular sequences in history is that...
■Rome
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Will Durant A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential cause of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her...
■Nature
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"At any moment a comet may come too close to the earth and set our little globe turning topsy-turvy in a hectic course, or choke its men and fleas with fumes or heat; or a fragment of the smiling sun...
■Character
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“History” said Henry Ford, “is bunk.” As one who has written history for twenty-five years, and studied it for forty-five, I should largely agree with the great engineer who put half the world on wheels....
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