Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Heroes of History

By Will Durant

Durant started this book when he was 92 years old and was two chapters short of finishing when he died at 96. (Defying concepts of old age, this became one of the most productive and creative periods in his long, productive, and creative life.) Originally planned as an audio lecture series, it quickly outgrew those constraints and became this book. The manuscript was lost when he died though only discovered and published 21 years later by John Little. Conceived and intended as a summary of the 11-Volume Story of Civilization, it depicts the most influential moments in history through the eyes of many of its prime movers.

Themes

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

Quotes from Heroes of History

“agriculture itself became an industry, wedded to chemistry and costly machines. Even so, population grew faster then the food supply; ancient customs and taboos defeated modern ways and views; and the people cancelled their prosperity with their fertility.”

Chapters:

Themes: Agriculture

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“All men are created unequal... Politics is the art of compromise between the classes”

Chapters: 17. True Leaders

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“Augustus was so unpretentious that a Gaul who came to kill him thought this could not be the Imperial ruler he sought... This man whose word had become law lived all the while a life of unassuming simplicity, shunning the luxuries of wealth and the emoluments of office, wearing the simple garments woven by the women in his home, and sleeping in a small room”

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“How revealing it is to find Confucius—some 500 years before Christ—writing about 'the wise men of antiquity'; the Chinese apparently, had philosophers 1000 years before Confucius, before Buddha, Isaiah, Democritus, and Socrates.”

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“in those thousand times a thousand years, man had to be pugnacious, always ready to fight—for his food, for his mate, for his life. If he could, he took more mates than one, for hunting and fighting were mortally dangerous and left a surplus of women over men; so the male is still polygamous [or polygamous] by nature.”

Chapters:

Themes: Warriors

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“The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness.”

Chapters: 39. Oneness

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“The middle classes, as well as the rich, began to distrust democracy as empowered envy, and the poor began to distrust it as a sham equality of votes stultified by a gaping inequality of wealth.”

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“The vision that drew Gandhi was of a people content with the simplicity of ancient ways. Like most visions this was not realistic... After Gandhi's assassination, his movement against industrialization was rapidly eroded by the natural acquisitiveness and competitive spirit of men.”

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“We must, at the start, clear our minds of all preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions, and theories.”

Chapters:

Themes: Letting Go

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“Wisdom can never be transmitted by words, only by examples and experience.”

Chapters:

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“Women had domesticated the sheep, the dog, the ass, and the pig; now she domesticated man. Man is woman's last domestic animal, only partially and reluctantly civilized... if pugnacity was not checked, it would lead to brawls at every corner... If sex were not controlled, it would make not only every park, but every street, unsafe for any woman... if acquisitiveness were not checked, it would lead to retail theft, wholesale robbery, political corruption, and to such concentration of wealth as would invite revolution.”

Chapters:

Themes: Control

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