William James Durant (5 November 1885 – 7 November 1981) was an American historian, philosopher and writer, most famous for his works The Story of Philosophy, and The Story of Civilization.
Will Durant That differences of race, color, and creed are natural, and that diverse groups, institutions, and ideas are stimulating factors in the development of man;That to promote harmony in diversity is a responsible task of religion and statesmanship;That since no individual can express the whole truth, it is essential to treat with understanding and good will those whose views differ from our own;That by the testimony of history intolerance is the door to violence, brutality and dictatorship; andThat the realization of human interdependence and solidarity is the best guard of civilization.
Will Durant Variant: We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit. Source: Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926) [Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6] Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VII: Ethics and the Nature of Happiness: "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'" (p. 76). The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7. The misattribution is from taking Durant's summation of Aristotle's ideas as being the words of Aristotle himself.