William Crapo “Billy” Durant (1861–1947) was a leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry, who created the system of multi-brand holding companies with different lines of cars; and the co-founder of General Motors with Frederic L. Smith, and of Chevrolet with Louis Chevrolet. He also founded Frigidaire.
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The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It’s the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
—William C. Durant
Cultivate your garden … Do not depend upon teachers to educate you … follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony … In the end, education, like happiness, is individual, and must come to us from life and from ourselves. There is no way; each pilgrim must make his own path. “Happiness,” said Chamfort, “is not easily won; it is hard to find it in ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere.”
—William C. Durant
The family is the nucleus of civilization.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Family
Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point, and never think of putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Truth
The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
—William C. Durant
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Living
Never put a man in the wrong. He will hold it against you forever.
—William C. Durant
The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Acceptance, Hope, Thinking
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
—William C. Durant
Topics: History
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Wisdom
Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
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.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Forgiveness
The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Health
Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Education, Wisdom, Progress, Discover
To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Harmony
When liberty destroys order, the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Order
Civilization is the order and freedom promoting cultural activity.
—William C. Durant
The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Business
Education is the transmission of civilization.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Education
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Knowledge, Desire
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Integrity
What better way is there no make men love one another than to make men understand one another. True charity comes only with clarity-just as mercy is but justice that understands. Surely the root of all evil is the inability to see clearly that which is.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Understanding
As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.
—William C. Durant
To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
—William C. Durant
The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.
—William C. Durant
Topics: Youth
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
—William C. Durant
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