Will Durant Quotes
A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization, Vol. 5: The Renaissance. Simon and Schuster, 1953.
He had been asked by some politicians if he would be interested in being an Iralian senator.
This is a very important quotation. No one likes to make moral compromises, but Mann realized that there was a necessity in a complex society—especially a republic to make compromises. Politics cannot function without compromises of all kinds moral and otherwise as different people have different views of morality and rectitude. Mann observed that if compromises must be made, it is better for the politicians to make them than the educators, physicians, clerics, and other professional groups. Therefore politics takes the heat so that the other institutions of society do not have to. Thus politics has this crucial role among its others according to Mann.
He was referring to the role of an Israeli political leader who was negotiating with the PLO. The civility of shaking hands with leaders of what had been a terrorist organization that had been responsible for the deaths of many Israelis. The great statesmen have to negotiate with their enemies.
From the 1787 Philadelphia discussions on the Constitution right up to the Civil War there was compromise after compromise on the slavery issue. Many political issues are amenable to compromise like tax rates or election modalities. Others like freedom of religion and speech and slavery are not. With the latter, compromise just delays the inevitable and often makes the final resolution more contentious and often violent.
William James Durant was a Russian born, historian, and philosopher. He became best known for his work “The Story of Civilization,” and acclaimed 11 volume series written over 50 years in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy (1926), described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy". They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1968 and in 1977, the Durants were presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
