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| Will Durant
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice. Death is an incident in an extended existence. Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old. Drunkenness was in good repute in England till "Bloody Mary" frowned upon it; it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Education is the transmission of civilization. Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles. Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. If man 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 my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order. Inquiry is fatal to certainty. It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country. Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul. Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions. Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years. Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal. One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power. The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages. The family is the nucleus of civilization. The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations. The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife. The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers. The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority. The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure. Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory. To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy. To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say. We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway. When people ask me to compare the 20th century to older civilizations, I always say the same thing: "The situation is normal." Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn. |
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