“We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.”

American historian and philosopher

Will Durant was an American historian and philosopher, best known for The Story of Civilization, the eleven-volume history he wrote with his wife, Ariel Durant. He lived from 1885 to 1981. He first gained wide notice with The Story of Philosophy in 1926, a book that helped bring philosophy to a broader public. His work focused on the sweep of civilization and the ideas that shape it, especially the history of Eastern and Western cultures.