Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps … - Will Durant

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I might not be able to use the word "hope," but I could certainly use the word "optimism. " I'm very optimistic. I don't feel that it helps to be pessimistic. At some point in my life I made a conscious decision that I would try to be optimistic - not blind to anything at all - but to always hear the way that had the best chance for happiness.

Will Durant

Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.

Civilization, Moving, Sea, Superstition, Works

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A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

Class, Destroyed, Lay, People, Struggle, War

Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day

Forget, Inspirational, Life, Lucky, Positive, Today

Does history warrant the conclusion that religion is necessary to morality - that a natural ethic is too weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams, crimes and wars?. . . There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

Civilization, Dream, Ethic, Life, War, Weak

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.

Bloodiest, Civilization, Evident, Islamic, Order

So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.

Civilization, Pleasure, Religion, Stoic, Stoicism, Undisciplined