In 1998, I was in my first - no, it was my second year of working on this site for what was then known as the Mining Company, and I was madly collecting quotations that had been made by archaeologists, or referred to archaeological subjects. One of my favorite quotations was from the historian Will Durant, or so I thought when I found it, somewhere on the Internet. My readers wrote back and said that my attribution of the quote to Will Durant's Story of Philosophy was incorrect. They offered a wide range of authors who might've been the source of the quotation, as well as a group of related quotations from Durant himself.
The question was long enough ago that it certainly reinforced my notions of the unreliability of the Internet: it also reinforced my desire to be accurate on my own website as much as possible. I'm very pleased to say today that I've heard from James Bishop of the Will Durant Foundation who assures me that the following quotation is from Will Durant, used by him in several lectures, and first published in the Ladies Home Journal in 1946.
The quote is "Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." Thanks to Mr. Bishop for resolving this ancient puzzle (ancient at least in Internet terms).
- Will Durant on geological consent, including all of the suggestions and related quotes.
- Archaeology Quotations
- the Will Durant Foundation
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