A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
Interpretation
A civilization's downfall often comes from internal issues rather than external forces.
Ariel Durant's quote suggests that the internal decay of a civilization—through division, corruption, or moral decline—can lead to its eventual collapse, regardless of outside threats. It emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and the need for societies to address their internal conflicts before they can be conquered by external forces, highlighting the idea that strength from within is crucial for survival.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture about the fall of empires and the importance of unity.
The 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.
The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint. Their wings are my protest in favor of the immortality of the soul.
As you become multi-sensory, you begin to see yourself as a soul first and a personality second. You begin to experience yourself as more than a body and more than a mind. and the circumstances around you as meaningful and designed for your spiritual growth.
He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.
Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views-then the world will be governed.
Words are things, but things which mean. We cannot do away with meaning without doing away with signs, that is, with language itself. Moreover, we would have to do away with the universe. All the things man touches are impregnated with meaning.
maybe she had become tired of being the girlfriend of a condemned man. It also occured to me that maybe she was sick, or dead. These things happen. [...] Anyway, after that, remembering Marie meant nothing to me. That seemed perfectly normal to me, since I understood very well that people would forget me when I was dead.
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