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 Welcome to the web site of the
Will Durant Foundation, the authoritative source for
information about the life, legacy and teachings of
Pulitzer Prize and Medal of Freedom winning
writers/philosophers/historians, Will and Ariel
Durant. For over half a century the Durants have been
teaching people the wonder and benefit of our human
heritage.
One of the
most gifted prose stylists of the 20th century, Will
Durant viewed history not as a dreary succession of
impersonal dates and reigns, but as taking place
through human beings who loved, fought, dreamed and
achieved. We at the Will Durant Foundation encourage
you to explore the Durants' writings and teachings in
greater detail and at your own pace.
Their books
have sold millions of copies and their influence and
insights are more vital today than at any other point
in our history. The Durants spent over fifty years
researching and writing about human behavior in their
critically acclaimed eleven-volume The Story of
Civilization. His first book, The Story of Philosophy (1926), is credited as the work that launched Simon
& Schuster as a major publishing force and that
introduced more people to the subject of philosophy
than any other book before or since. In our own era,
new presentations of Dr. Durant's writings (such as
Heroes Of History and The Greatest Minds And Ideas Of
All Time) and the concentrated lore of their audio
recordings, have allowed Will and Ariel Durant to
continue to speak to students, teachers, parents,
children, journalists, businesspeople, intellectuals
and all who hunger for a deeper meaning to existence
and a more civilized approach to living and dealing
with one another.
Possessed of
an unparalleled insight into the human condition, the
Durants brought their vast knowledge to bear on
mankind's greatest issues of concern and did so in a
way that was always enlightening and life affirming,
revealing history to be not (as some have contended)
meaningless, but the very map of human character; the
best educator and guide to the present ailments of
our time. As Dr. Durant wrote:
It
is a mistake to think that the past is dead.
Nothing that has ever happened is quite without
influence at this moment. The present is merely
the past rolled up and concentrated in this
second of time. You, too, are your past; often
your face is your autobiography; you are what you
are because of what you have been; because of
your heredity stretching back into forgotten
generations; because of every element of
environment that has affected you, every man or
woman that has met you, every book that you have
read, every experience that you have had; all
these are accumulated in your memory, your body,
your character, your soul. So with a city, a
country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot
be understood without it.
Perhaps
the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our
tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of
conflicts - between individuals in economic life,
between groups in politics, between creeds in
religion, between states in war. This is the more
dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of
the historian and the interest of the reader. But
if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot
with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the
banks of the stream, we find quieter but more
inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men
building homes, peasants drawing food from the
soil, artisans making the conveniences of life,
statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of
war, teachers forming savages into citizens,
musicians taming our hearts with harmony and
rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating
knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints
suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been
too often a picture of the bloody stream. The
history of civilization is a record of what
happened on the banks.
Welcome again
to the Will Durant Foundation - your doorway to
self-discovery.
To join our mailing list,
simply
send us an email with the subject line "mailing list" at
the address below:
feedback@willdurant.com
The content of this website,
unless otherwise noted, is copyrighted © 2006 John
Little and the Estate of Will Durant
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