William James Durant (1885 – 1981) Quotes: India
William James Durant (5 November 1885 – 7 November 1981) was an American historian, philosopher and writer, most famous for his works The Story of Philosophy, and The Story of Civilization.
== Quotes ==
I felt more keenly than before the need of a philosophy that would do justice to the infinite vitality of nature. In the inexhaustible activity of the atom, in the endless resourcefulness of plants, in the teeming fertility of animals, in the hunger and movement of infants, in the laughter and play of children, in the love and devotion of youth, in the restless ambition of fathers and the lifelong sacrifice of mothers, in the undiscourageable researches of scientists and the sufferings of genius, in the crucifixion of prophets and the martyrdom of saints — in all things I saw the passion of life for growth and greatness, the drama of everlasting creation. I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process... I became almost reconciled to mortality, knowing that my spirit would survive me enshrined in a fairer mold... and that my little worth would somehow be preserved in the heritage of men. In a measure the Great Sadness was lifted from me, and, where I had seen omnipresent death, I saw now everywhere the pageant and triumph of life.
Transition (1927)Surely, the time has come for the intellectuals, the liberals, and the radicals of the world to speak out about this new slavery, to call it clearly and bluntly what it is. For it can no longer be doubted that in this dictatorship of the politicians is to be found every abuse which liberals and radicals have denounced in their own society for generations. . . . the Soviet has allowed it people to starve by the thousands. . . . It has choked all competition, and made itself a monopoly of monopolies; it has restored selfdom, conscription of labor, and indentured servitude among a people that has recently liberated itself by revolution and civil war, from these feudal chains; . . . it has keep wages low and labor intense, it has made democracy in the factory only a sham; it has herded and regimented its people like cattle. It has pitilessly industrialized its women under the pretense of emancipating them; it has crowded the population into dingy quarters, and offered every discouragement to the creation of homes. . . . . It is stifled the growth of democracy, and has centralized power into dictatorship of fanatics and machines; it has waged a class war against the peasants, tradesmen, and mental workers; . . . there is no opportunity for the expression of the public will; . . . it has oppressed with unsurpassed barbarity men and women guilty of no other crime then the prosperity attendant upon enterprise, industry, intelligence, and thrift; it has refused to the rights of habeas corpus, of trial by jury, of equality before the law; it has sent it secret police into millions of homes; . . . it has terrorized the public with marching armies, secret police, merciless penalties, and a million spies. It has deported or shot hundreds of thousands of men and women solely for political heresy and non-conformance. It has subjected to censorship every drama and every book, even every opera; it has prostituted the press, the radio and the stage . . . It has suppressed all freedom of speech or assembly, and in effect has raised a thousand obstacles against the freedom of worship and belief. . . Slavery, barbarism and desolation—these fundamentally, despite a thousand minor virtues, is what Russia is today.
The Tragedy of Russia: Impressions from a brief visit , New York, NY, Simon and Schuster (1933) pp. 150-54Most of our literature and social philosophy after 1850 was the voice of freedom against authority, of the child against the parent, of the pupil against the teacher. Through many years I shared in that individualistic revolt. I do not regret it; it is the function of youth to defend liberty and innovation, of the old to defend order and tradition, and of middle age to find a middle way.
“The Second Sexual Revolution”, Time magazine, (24 January 1964)Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Quoted in "Books: The Great Gadfly", Time magazine, 8 October 1965 (review of The Age of Voltaire by Will and Ariel Durant)The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.
The Lessons of History (1968), p. 72 (co-authored with Ariel Durant)Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus. You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.
When asked, at the age of 92, if he could summarize the lessons of history into a single sentence. As quoted in "Durants on History from the Ages, with Love," by Pam Proctor, Parade (6 August 1978) p. 12. Durant is quoting Jesus (from John 13:34) here, and might also be quoting Jiddu Krishnamurti: "Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself — these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society."It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it.
As quoted in "The Gentle Philosopher" (2006) by John Little at the Will Durant FoundationPerhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts — between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks.
As quoted in "The Gentle Philosopher" (2006) by John Little at Will Durant FoundationTo speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.
We Have a Right To Be Happy Today, commencement address at the Webb School of Claremont, California (7 June 1958)Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
"What is Civilization?" Ladies' Home Journal, LXIII (January, 1946)The invention and spread of contraceptives is the proximate cause of our changing morals. The old moral code restricted sexual experience to marriage, because copulation could not be effectively separated from parentage, and parentage could be made responsible only through marriage. But to-day the dissociation of sex from reproduction has created a situation unforeseen by our fathers. All the relations of men and women are being changed by this one factor; and the moral code of the future will have to take account of these new facilities which invention has placed at the service of ancient desires.
Our Changing Morals, in The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey of Human Life and Destiny (1929), Ch. 5. p. 119I know how unfashionable it is now to acknowledge in life or history any genius loftier than ourselves. Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. … Since it is contrary to good manners to exalt ourselves, we achieve the same result by slyly indicating how inferior are the great men of the earth. In some of us, perhaps, it is a noble and merciless asceticism, which would root out of our hearts the last vestige of worship and adoration, lest the old gods should return and terrify us again. For my part, I cling to this final religion, and discover in it a content and stimulus more lasting than came from the devotional ecstasies of youth.
The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time (2002) edited by John Little, Ch. 1 : The Shameless Worship of Heroes
=== The Story of Philosophy (1926) ===
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'.
p. 87. The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7Philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to 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.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.When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
=== The Case for India (1931) ===
India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.It might have been supposed that the building of 30,000 miles of railways would have brought a measure of prosperity to India. But these railways were built not for India but for England; not for the benefit of the Hindu, but for the purposes of the British army and British trade.
=== Declaration of INTERdependence (1945) ===
Introduced into the US Congressional Record on October 1, 1945 (PDF Document)Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths:
That differences of race, color, and creed are natural, and that diverse groups, institutions, and ideas are stimulating factors in the development of man;
That to promote harmony in diversity is a responsible task of religion and statesmanship;
That since no individual can express the whole truth, it is essential to treat with understanding and good will those whose views differ from our own;
That by the testimony of history intolerance is the door to violence, brutality and dictatorship; and
That the realization of human interdependence and solidarity is the best guard of civilization.Rooted in freedom, bonded in the fellowship of danger, sharing everywhere a common human blood, we declare again that all men are brothers, and that mutual tolerance is the price of liberty.
=== The Story of Civilization (1935–1975) ===
==== I - Our Oriental Heritage (1935) ====
Our Oriental Heritage online at the Internet Archive If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and yearns for that government which governs least. If he asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous. In the simplest societies there is hardly any government. Primitive hunters tend to accept regulation only when they join the hunting pack and prepare for action. The Bushmen usually live in solitary families; the Pygmies of Africa and the simplest natives of Australia admit only temporarily of political organization, and then scatter away to their family groups; the Tasmanians had no chiefs, no laws, no regular government; the Veddahs of Ceylon formed small circles according to family relationship, but had no government; the Kubus of Sumatra "live without men in authority" every family governing itself; the Fuegians are seldom more than twelve together; the Tungus associate sparingly in groups of ten tents or so; the Australian "horde" is seldom larger than sixty souls. In such cases association and cooperation are for special purposes, like hunting; they do not rise to any permanent political order.
Ch. III : The Political Elements of Civilization, p. 21Nothing should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India. Here is a vast peninsula of nearly two million square miles; two-thirds as large as the United States, and twenty times the size of its master, Great Britain; 320,000,000 souls, more than in all North and South America combined, or one-fifth of the population of the earth; an impressive continuity of development and civilization from Mohenjo-daro, 2900 B.C. or earlier, to Gandhi, Raman and Tagore; faiths compassing every stage from barbarous idolatry to the most subtle and spiritual pantheism; philosophers playing a thousand variations on one monistic theme from the Upanishads eight centuries before Christ to Shankara eight centuries after him; scientists developing astronomy three thousand years ago, and winning Nobel prizes in our own time; a democratic constitution of untraceable antiquity in the villages, and wise and beneficent rulers like Ashoka and Akbar in the capitals; minstrels singing great epics almost as old as Homer, and poets holding world audiences today; artists raising gigantic temples for Hindu gods from Tibet to Ceylon and from Cambodia to Java, or carving perfect palaces by the score for Mogul kings and queens — this is the India that patient scholarship is now opening up, like a new intellectual continent, to that Western mind which only yesterday thought civilization an exclusively European thing.
Ch. XIV : The Foundations of India § I : Scene of the DramaThe Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
Ch. XVI : From Alexander to Aurangzeb, § VI : The Moslem Conquest; this has become misquoted in paraphrased form as : "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.It is in the nature of governments to degenerate; for power, as Shelley said, poisons every hand that touches it. The excesses of the Delhi Sultans lost them the support not only of the Hindu population, but of their Moslem followers. When fresh invasions came from the north these Sultans were defeated with the same ease with which they themselves had won India.
Ch. XVI : From Alexander to Aurangzeb, § VII : Akbar the GreatWhile Catholics were murdering Protestants in France, and Protestants, under Elizabeth, were murdering Catholics in England, and the Inquisition was killing and robbing Jews in Spain, and Bruno was being burned at the stake in Italy, Akbar invited the representatives of all the religions in his empire to a conference, pledged them to peace, issued edicts of toleration for every cult and creed, and, as evidence of his own neutrality, married wives from the Brahman, Buddhist, and Mohammedan faiths. His greatest pleasure, after the fires of youth had cooled, was in the free discussion of religious beliefs. … The King took no stock in revelations, and would accept nothing that could not justify itself with science and philosophy. It was not unusual for him to gather friends and prelates of various sects together, and discuss religion with them from Thursday evening to Friday noon. When the Moslem mullahs and the Christian priests quarreled he reproved them both, saying that God should be worshiped through the intellect, and not by a blind adherence to supposed revelations. "Each person," he said, in the spirit — and perhaps through the influence — of the Upanishads and Kabir, "according to his condition gives the Supreme Being a name; but in reality to name the Unknowable is vain."
Ch. XVI : From Alexander to Aurangzeb, § VII : Akbar the Great
==== II - Life of Greece (1939) ====
Full text online at the Internet ArchiveWater is the usual drink, but everyone has wine, for no civilization has found life tolerable without narcotics or stimulants.
Ch. XII : Work and Wealth in Athens, p. 270No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
Ch. XII : Work and Wealth in Athens, p. 277
==== III - Caesar and Christ (1944) ====
There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.
Chapter 30, part 1, p. 652A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.
Epilogue: "Why Rome Fell", p. 665
==== VI - The Reformation (1957) ====
I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality.
PrefaceTo all Christian governments Christianity was not a rule of means but a means of rule; Christ was for the people, Machiavelli was preferred by the kings. The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would civilize the state?
Chapter 6, p. 229II feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.
Preface
==== XI - The Age of Napoleon (1975) ====
Co-written with Ariel Durant Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
Ch. IV : The Convention: September 21, 1792 - October 26, 1795, Part V : The Reign of Terror: September 17, 1793 - July 28, 1794, § 4 : The Revolution Eats Its Children
=== Fallen Leaves (2014) ===
Fallen Leaves : Last Words on Life, Love, War and God (2014)Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.
Ch. 1 : Our life beginsSee him, the newborn, dirty but marvelous, ridiculous in actuality, infinite in possibility, capable of that ultimate miracle, growth.
Ch. 1 : Our life beginsLife is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates.
Ch. 1 : Our life beginsChildhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old.
Ch. 1 : Our life beginsMan is as young as the risks he takes.
Ch. 2 : On YouthHappiness is the free play of the instincts, and so is youth.
Ch. 2 : On YouthLet us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.
Ch. 2 : On YouthYouth is learning to read (which is all that one learns in school), and is learning where and how to find what he may later need to know (which is the best of the arts that he acquires in college). Nothing learned from a book is worth anything until it is used and verified in life; only then does it begin to affect behavior and desire. It is Life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.
Ch. 2 : On YouthThe principle of the family was mutual aid; but the principle of society is competition, the struggle for existence, the elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong.
Ch. 2 : On YouthHere is a fulfillment of long centuries of civilization and culture; here, in romantic love, more than the triumph of thought or the victories of power is the topmost reach of human beings.
Ch. 2 : On YouthWisdom, if it were young, would cherish love, nursing it with devotion, deepening it with sacrifice, vitalizing with parentage, making all things subordinate to it till the end. Even though it consumes us in its service and overwhelms us with tragedy, even though it breaks us down with separations, let it be first. How can it matter what price we pay for love?
Ch. 2 : On YouthMiddle age begins with marriage; for then work and responsibility replace carefree play, passion surrenders to the limitations of social order, and poetry yields to prose.
Ch. 3 : On Middle AgeAs we find a place in the economic world the rebellion of youth subsides; we disapprove of earthquakes when our feet are on the earth. We forget then the radicalism then in a gentle liberalism — which is radicalism softened with the consciousness of a bank account.
Ch. 3 : On Middle AgeShe is a woman now, and not an idle girl, not a domestic ornament or a sexual convenience anymore.
On the maturation of women, Ch. 4 : On Old AgeA man is as old as his arteries, and as young as his ideas.
Ch. 4 : On Old AgeHere and everywhere is the struggle for existence, life inextricably enmeshed with war. All life living at the expense of life, every organism eating other organisms forever.
Ch. 4 : On Old AgeLife is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageble, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.
Ch. 5 : On DeathSpace, subjectively, is the coexistence of perceptions — perceiving two objects at once.
Ch. 6 : Our SoulsTime, subjectively, is the conscious sequence of perceptions.
Ch. 6 : Our SoulsBy mind I mean the totality of perceptions, memories and ideas in an organism.
Ch. 6 : Our SoulsA sensation is the feeling of an external stimulus or an internal condition.
Ch. 6 : Our Souls
== External links ==
Will Durant Foundation
