Will Durant

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

But the noblest distinction of man is his passion for knowledge. Shocked by the wars and crimes of mankind, disheartened by the selfishness of ability and the perpetuity of poverty, saddened by the superstitions and credulities with which the nations and generations gild the brevity and indignities of life, we feel our race in some part redeemed when we see that it can hold a soaring dream in its mind and heart for three thousand years, from the legend of Daedalus and Icarus, through the baffled groping of Leonardo, and a thousand others, to the glorious and tragic victory of our time.

Philosophy is the study of the part in the light of the whole; and its first lesson is that we are very small parts of a very large whole. The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness.

The noblest love of all is that which most widens the ego and offers open heart and arms to all living, peaceful things. Happy is the soul that so enlarges its love.

We honor Michelangelo because through a long and tortured life he continued to create, and produced in each main field, a masterpiece. We see these works torn, so to speak, out of his flesh and blood, out of his mind and heart, leaving him for a time weakened with birth. We see them taking form in a hundred thousand strokes of hammer and chisel, pencil and brush; one after another, like an immortal population, they take their place among the lasting shapes of beauty and significance.

Energy is only half of genius; the other half is harness.

[Pericles] thought of art as subordinate to life, and of living as the greatest art of all; he had a healthy utilitarian bias against any beauty that could not be used; the useful, the beautiful, and the good were almost as closely bound together in his thought as in Plato’s philosophy.

To have a great purpose to work for, a purpose larger than ourselves, is one of the secrets of making life significant; for then the meaning and worth of the individual overflow his personal borders, and survive his death.

We gave them, through technology and engineering, unprecedented wealth—miraculous automobiles, luxurious travel, and spacious homes; only to find that peace departs as riches come.

No one deserves to believe unless he has served an apprenticeship to doubt.

The simplest meaning of life, then, is joy—the exhilaration of experience itself.

I hope to Heaven this restlessness, this constant hope of arriving at some degree of perfection, is not a peculiar form of conceit. To me, it is Religion. It is a ‘motive force of toil.’

All thought that does not lead to action, said Goethe, is a disease.

More and more it stands out that a man must combine action with thought in order to lead a life that shall have unity and significance.

To understand human health we have to study our own species, the human animal. We start by looking at how we lived as hunter-gatherers on the African savannah.

The quest for a healthy human diet doesn’t end in the Paleolithic—but that’s the right place to start.

In general, avoid things that are made in a factory, contain lots of ingredients you can’t pronounce, and don’t spoil. Avoiding sugar, vegetable oils, and cereal grains will also preclude most industrial foods.

Yet carb-heavy grains are exactly what farmers feed to livestock to fatten them up as quickly and cheaply as possible. Let me repeat that, just for good measure: grains—the base of the USDA food pyramid for humans—are what American farmers use to fatten up their livestock.

Almost any change in diet that results in eating less industrial foods will improve one’s health. It doesn’t matter whether it’s due to veganism or Atkins—people who stop drinking soda will get healthier. This is a major reason that so many wacky diet programs work initially: they get people to avoid a similar set of industrial foods, such as white flour, refined sugar, and vegetable oils.

There’s no such thing as perfect—no perfect diet, no perfect exercise, no perfect lifestyle. Unconcerned with perfection, biohackers adopt smart rules of thumb that stand a decent chance of being more or less right (the 80/20 rule).

The challenge may seem daunting, but we can do what our ancestors did: take one small step after another until we arrive at a very different place. Risen apes or fallen angels, we walk tall with eyes forward—one foot firmly planted on the ground of what we are, the other reaching into the future of what we can become.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Be nice to people on your way up because you might meet them on your way down.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.