If you have character, endeavor, personality, courage and the capacity for concentrated labor, you will do what is your destiny – and, perhaps, even do it well.
Ariel DurantIt is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.
Ariel DurantA great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
Ariel DurantThe influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization.
Ariel Durant