Will Durant Quotes
How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
Durant, Will. The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey of Human Life and Destiny. Simon and Schuster, 1929.
The fear of nuclear war was a major emotion for most people in the world at the time. Hard liners like Goldwater were concerned that that fear would undermine support for greater nuclear development and deployment in America and maintaining opposition to nuclear test ban treaties that were under discussion. He made the mistake however of referring to the fear as “craven”, morally denigrating any American who might be in fear of nuclear war, which included just about everyone. So the Democrats took this quotation and used it in their battery of TV ads showing Goldwater as not only a hard liner, but one who had no empathy or understanding for a normal person who feared a nuclear conflict—one who was not to be trusted with the Presidency. Had Goldwater simply argued that legitimate and reasonable fear of nuclear conflict might make the nation too timid and perhaps inadvertently increase the likelihood of nuclear disaster by not standing up to the Russians, he may not have had the resentment from most people who thought Goldwater was calling their fears “craven”.
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.
