The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It’s the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that as people get older, their minds may not work as well as they used to, even though they may still feel young and capable. It can be difficult for people to accept that their mental abilities have declined over time. The quote compares the mind to a "machine" that can no longer "go on" as it once did, even though the person's ego, or sense of self, still believes they are as sharp as ever.
About Will Durant
Will Durant was an American historian and philosopher, best known for his 11-volume work The Story of Civilization, which detailed the history of Eastern and Western civilizations. He was also noted for his groundbreaking work The Story of Philosophy, which helped popularize philosophy. Durant and his wife Ariel were awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their collaborative efforts.
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The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.
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When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
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One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
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If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
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As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
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There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
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History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.
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Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.
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Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.
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In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
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Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.
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Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
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There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.
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Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
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Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
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Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
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Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.
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Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.
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To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.
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Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.
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The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
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Education is the transmission of civilization.
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The family is the nucleus of civilization.
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The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
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Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
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Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.
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Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
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The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.
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I am not against hasty marriages, where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.
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We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.
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Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
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We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.
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