Will Durant Quotes

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

All I know is that history repeats itself and people are going to want to experience the world. But I know then they are going to have a better appreciation for what is here in Maine.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.

The specific media may change, but the principles of human nature have remained fairly constant over the millenia.

Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

History repeats itself over and over again, but most of us have short memories.

It is supposed to true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.

Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I knew people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.

People are like animals. Some are happiest penned in, some need to roam free. You go to recognize what's in her nature and accept it.

How we act with each other really reveals our most animal instincts.

Human pride is a strange thing; it cannot easily be suppressed, and if you stop up hole A will peep forth again in a twinkling from another hole B, and if this is closed it is ready to come out at hole C, and so on.

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities.

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.

It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans.

Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.

It is one of the peculiar truths of life that people often say things that they know full well are ridiculous.

People look like rivers very much: water is everywhere the same, but the rivers are narrow, fast, wide, pure, cold, muddy and warm. The people are the same. They have the rudiment of every human habit in them and they behave according to them. Sometimes they even do not look like themselves, but they still stay whatever they are.

Doing the right things for the wrong reasons is typical of humanity. Precession - not conscious planning - provides a productive outcome for misguided political and military campaigns.

... reform the environment and not man; being absolutely confident that if you give man the right environment, he will behave favorably.

And the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history.

I'm not sorry, it's human nature.