Quotes from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Grow strong, my comrade … that you may stand
Unshaken when I fall; that I may know
The shattered fragments of my song will come
At last to finer melody in you;
That I may tell my heart that you begin
Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“يقول شوبنهاور: لاشيء يبعث فينا الانسجام أكثر من المعرفة الدقيقة، وكلما ازددنا معرفة لعواطفنا كلما قلّت سيطرتها علينا. ولاشيء يحمينا أكثر من السيطرة على نفوسنا، فإذا أردت أن تخضع كل شيء لنفسك أخضع نفسك لعقلك. إن قاهر العالم لا يثير فينا الإعجاب كما يثيره قاهر نفسه”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“لا شيء يُعلّمُ الإنساان أكثر من الصدمات واهتزاز المشاعر”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“يقول سبينوزا: وعندما يبدو لنا أي شيء في الطبيعة مضحكاً أو سخيفاً، غامضاً أو شراً فذلك لأننا ليست لدينا سوى معرفة قليلة بالأشياء، وأننا جاهلون بنظام الطبيعة وتماسكها ككل واحد، ولأننا نريد أن تجري الأشياء وفقاً لتفكيرنا وآرائنا، مع أن ما يعتبره عقلنا سيئاً أو شراً ليس شراً أو سيئاً بالنسبة إلى نظام الطبيعة وقوانينها الشاملة الكلية. بل بالنسبة إلى قوانين طبيعتنا الخاصة المنفصلة. أما بالنسبة إلى كلمة الخير والشر فإنها لا تدل على شيء إيجابي في حد ذاتها، لأن الشيء الواحد نفسه قد يكون في وقت واحد خيراً أو شراً، أو لا هذا ولا ذاك كالموسيقى مثلاً فإنها خير بالنسبة إلى المنقبض النفس وشر بالنسبة إلى النائح الحزين الذي فقد شخصاً عزيزاً عليه. وهي ليست خيراً أو شراً بالنسبة إلى الميت”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“إن الفلسفة تبدأ عندما يبدأ الإنسان يتعلم الشك، وخصوصاً الشك في المعتقدات التي يحبها، والعقائد والبديهيات أو الحقائق المقررة التي يؤمن بها ويقدسها.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“يقول سبينوزا: إننا تتقاذفنا الأسباب الخارجية من كل ناحية، ونتحرك كأمواج تدفعها رياح معاكسة لا نعرف شيئاً عن مصيرنا. والإنسان إذا تحكمت به العواطف لا يرى إلا جانباً واحداً من الموقف. وبالفكر وحده يستطيع الإنسان أن يرى موقفه من جميع نواحيه. إن العاطفة فكرة ناقصة. والعواطف الغريزية عظيمة كقوة دافعة ولكنها خطيرة كمرشد لنا، لأن كل واحدة من الغرائز تبحث عن إشباع رغباتها، غير مهتمة بمصلحة الشخصية كلها. أي دمار نزل بالناس بسبب الإفراط في الطمع وحب الخصام أو الشهوات حتى غدوا عبيد غرائزهم التي تسيطر عليهم. إن العواطف التي تهاجمنا كل يوم مرتبطة بجزء من الجسد الذي يتأثر بها أكثر من بقية الأجزاء، والعواطف متطرفة وتمنع العقل من التفكير إلا في موضوع واحد، ولا يعود يقوى على التفكير في الأشياء الأخرى”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“لقد قال فولتير إذا كنت ترغب في التحدث معي عرّف ما تقول وحدد قولك. كم من نقاش قد ينكمش ويتحول إلى مقطع لو تجرأ المتناقشون على تحديد عباراتهم وجملهم، هذا هو الأول والآخر في المنطق، وقلبه وروحه، بأن تخضع كل عبارة هامة في حديث جدي إلى أشد أنواع التعريف والتحديد والفحص. إنها طريقة صعبة، وامتحان لا رحمة فيه للعقل”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“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";[69] we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit;”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom—desire coordinated in the light of all experience—can tell us when to heal and when to kill.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“يقول شوبنهاور: إن كل الملاحم التمثيلية لا يسعها إلا أن تصوّر نزاعاً وجهداً وقتالاً من أجل السعادة ولكنها لا تحتمل السعادة نفسها أبداً. وهي تسير بأبطالها إلى آلاف المخاطر والمصاعب للوصول إلى الهدف المنشود، وبمجرد أن يبلغ هؤلاء الأبطال أهدافهم تسارع القصة إلى إسدال الستار إذ لم يعد لها شيء بعد ذلك لتظهره سوى أن الهدف اللامع البرّاق الذي توقع البطل أن يجد فيه السعادة قد خيّب أمله، وأنه لم يكن بعد بلوغه أسعد حالاً منه قبل بلوغه.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“The constant steaming in of thoughts of others must suppress and confine our own and indeed in the long run paralyze the power of thought… The inclination of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui ( latin for vacuum suction )from the poverty of their own mind , which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others… It is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves… When we read, another person thinks for us; merely repeat his mental process. So it comes about that if anybody spends almost the whole day in reading, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking. Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge and very little experience , the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Both Stoicism and Epicureanism—. the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure—were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved;”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“..we have become wealthy, and wealth is the prelude to art. In every country where centuries of physical effort have accumulated the means for luxury and leisure, culture has followed as naturally as vegetation grows in a rich and watered soil. To have become wealthy was the first necessity; a people too must live before it can philosophize. No doubt we have grown faster than nations usually have grown; and the disorder of our souls is due to the rapidity of our development. We are like youths disturbed and unbalanced, for a time, by the sudden growth and experiences of puberty. But soon our maturity will come; our minds will catch up with our bodies, our culture with our possessions. Perhaps there are greater souls than Shakespeare's, and greater minds than Plato's, waiting to be born. When we have learned to reverence liberty as well as wealth, we too shall have our Renaissance.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“The qualities of character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness is courage; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between sloth and greed is ambition; between humility and pride is modesty; between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; between moroseness and buffoonery, good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery, friendship; between Hamlet’s indecisiveness and Quixote’s impulsiveness is self-control.49 “Right,” then, in ethics or conduct, is not different from “right” in mathematics or engineering; it means correct, fit, what works best to the best result. The”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Facts" replaced understanding; and knowledge, split into a thousand isolated fragments, no longer generated wisdom.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“تنظم الأخلاق في شكلٍ ثلاثي , يكون الطرفان الأول والأخير فيهما تطرف ورذيلة والوسط فضل أو فضيلة , وهكذا يكون بين التهور والجبن فضيلة الشجاعة , وبين الكسل والجشع فضيلة الطموح , وبين البخل والإسراف فضيلة الكرم , و بين الكتمان والثرثرة فضيلة الأمانة, وبين الكآبة المزاح فضيلة البشاشة , وبين محبة الخصام والتملق فضيلة الصداقة”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind... A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“The only dedication in one of the hosts of books I have had the privilege of knowing, is from the great contemporary thinker, Will Durant whose incredible encyclopedic mind had within it- the poetry of the heart, I quote:

“ TO MY WIFE
Grow strong, my comrade…that you may stand
Unshaken when I fall; that I may know
The shattered fragments of my song will come
At last to finer melody in you;
That I may tell my heart that you begin
Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“إن الفلسفة تبدأ عندما يتعلم الإنسان الشك - وخصوصاً الشك فى المعتقدات التى يحبها، والعقائد والبديهيات أو الحقائق المقررة التى يؤمن بها ويُقدسها. من يعرف كيف أصبحت هذه المعتقدات العزيزة علينا حقائق يقينية بيننا، وفيما إذا كانت لم تلدها رغبة سرية، ملبسة الرغبة ثوب الفكرة ؟ لا وجود للسياسة الحقة ما لم يتجه العقل إلى فحص نفسه.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead... Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

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