These are quotes by Will Durant. After my son was assigned to discuss the first quote, I felt that posting more of his thinking would be valuable to others.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.

I am not against hasty marriages, where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income.

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.

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.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.

Man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law.

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

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.

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.

Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory.

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.

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.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

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.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street an Broadway.

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

Quoted from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/will_durant.html

Basic Rights? Mr. Obama seems to think we should be adopting the following... (some words changed to protect the guilty)

Chapter 7: THE BASIC RIGHTS, FREEDOMS, AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY
 
Article 39. Citizens of the Country enjoy in full the social, economic, political and personal rights and freedoms proclaimed and guaranteed by the Constitution of the Country and by our other laws. The system ensures enlargement of the rights and freedoms of citizens and continuous improvement of their living standards as social, economic, and cultural development programmes are fulfilled.
 Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe the rights of other citizens.
 
Article 40. Citizens of the Country have the right to work (that is, to guaranteed employment and pay in accordance with the quantity and quality of their work, and not below the state-established minimum), including the right to choose their trade or profession, type of job and work in accordance with their inclinations, abilities, training and education, with due account of the needs of society.
 This right is ensured by the economic system, steady growth of the productive forces, free vocational and professional training, improvement of skills, training in new trades or professions, and development of the systems of vocational guidance and job placement.
 
Article 41. Citizens of the Country have the right to rest and leisure.
This right is ensured by the establishment of a working week not exceeding 41 hours, for workers and other employees, a shorter working day in a number of trades and industries, and shorter hours for night work; by the provision of paid annual holidays, weekly days of rest, extension of the network of cultural, educational, and health-building institutions, and the development on a mass scale of sport, physical culture, and camping and tourism; by the provision of neighborhood recreational facilities, and of other opportunities for rational use of free time.
 The length of farmers’ working and leisure time is established by their farm co-op.
 
Article 42. Citizens of the Country have the right to health protection.
 This right is ensured by free, qualified medical care provided by state health institutions; by extension of the network of therapeutic and health-building institutions; by the development and improvement of safety and hygiene in industry; by carrying out broad prophylactic measures; by measures to improve the environment; by special care for the health of the rising generation, including prohibition of child labour, excluding the work done by children as part of the school curriculum; and by developing research to prevent and reduce the incidence of disease and ensure citizens a long and active life.
 
Article 43. Citizens of the Country have the right to maintenance in old age, in sickness, and in the event of complete or partial disability or loss of the breadwinner.
 The right is guaranteed by social insurance of workers and other employees and collective farmers; by allowances for temporary disability; by the provision by the state or by farms of retirement pensions, disability pensions, and pensions for loss of the breadwinner; by providing employment for the partially disabled; by care for the elderly and the disabled; and by other forms of social security.
 
Article 44. Citizens of the Country have the rights to housing.
 This right is ensured by the development and upkeep of state and socially-owned housing; by assistance for co-operative and individual house building; by fair distribution, under public control, of the housing that becomes available through fulfillment of the programme of building well-appointed dwellings, and by low rents and low charges for utility services.
Citizens of the Country shall take good care of the housing allocated to them.
 
Article 45. Citizens of the Country have the right to education.
 This right is ensured by free provision of all forms of education, by the institution of universal, compulsory secondary education, and broad development of vocational, specialised secondary, and higher education, in which instruction is oriented toward practical activity and production; by the development of extramural, correspondence and evening courses, by the provision of state scholarships and grants and privileges for students; by the free issue of school textbooks; by the opportunity to attend a school where teaching is in the native language; and by the provision of facilities for self-education.
 
Article 46. Citizens of the Country have the right to enjoy cultural benefits.
 This rights is ensured by broad access to the cultural treasures of their own land and of the world that are preserved in state and other public collections; by the development and fair distribution of cultural and educational institutions throughout the country; by developing television and radio broadcasting and the publishing of books, newspapers and periodicals, and by extending the free library service; and by expanding cultural exchanges with other countries.
 
Article 47. Citizens of the Country, in accordance with the aims of our society, are guaranteed freedom of scientific, technical, and artistic work. This freedom is ensured by broadening scientific research, encouraging invention and innovation, and developing literature and the arts. The state provides the necessary material conditions for this and support for voluntary societies and unions of workers in the arts, organises introduction of inventions and innovations in production and other spheres of activity.
 The rights of authors, inventors and innovators are protected by the state.
 
Article 48. Citizens of the Country have the right to take part in the management and administration of state and public affairs and in the discussion and adoption of laws and measures of All-Union and local significance.
 This right is ensured by the opportunity to vote and to be elected to The Legislature and other elective state bodies, to take part in nationwide discussions and referendums, in people's control, in the work of state bodies, public organisations, and local community groups, and in meetings at places of work or residence.
 
Article 49. Every citizen of the Country has the right to submit proposals to state bodies and public organisations for improving their activity, and to criticise shortcomings in their work.
 Officials are obliged, within established time-limits, to examine citizens' proposals and requests, to reply to them, and to take appropriate action.
 Persecution for criticism is prohibited. Persons guilty of such persecution shall be called to account.
 
Article 50. In accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the system, citizens of the Country are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations.
 Exercise of these political freedoms is ensured by putting public buildings, streets and squares at the disposal of the working people and their organisations, by broad dissemination of information, and by the opportunity to use the press, television, and radio.
 
Article 51. In accordance with the aims of building a fair society, citizens of the Country have the right to associate in public organisations that promote their political activity and initiative and satisfaction of their various interests.
 Public organisations are guaranteed conditions for successfully performing the functions defined in their rules.
 
Article 52. Citizens of the Country are guaranteed freedom of conscience, that is, the right to profess or not to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship or atheistic propaganda. Incitement of hostility or hatred on religious grounds is prohibited.
 In the Country, the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church.
 
Article 53. The family enjoys the protection of the state.
 Marriage is based on the free consent of the woman and the man; the spouses are completely equal in their family relations.
 The state helps the family by providing and developing a broad system of childcare institutions, by organising and improving communal services and public catering, by paying grants on the birth of a child, by providing children's allowances and benefits for large families, and other forms of family allowances and assistance.
 
Article 54. Citizens of the Country are guaranteed inviolability of the person. No one may be arrested except by a court decision or on the warrant of a procurator.
 
Article 55. Citizens of the Country are guaranteed inviolability of the home. No one may, without lawful grounds, enter a home against the will of those residing in it.
 
Article 56. The privacy of citizens, and of their correspondence, telephone conversations, and telegraphic communications is protected by law.
 
Article 57. Respect for the individual and protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens are the duty of all state bodies, public organisations, and officials.  Citizens of the Country have the right to protection by the courts against encroachments on their honour and reputation, life and health, and personal freedom and property.
 
Article 58. Citizens of the Country have the right to lodge a complaint against the actions of officials, state bodies and public bodies. Complaints shall be examined according to the procedure and within the time-limit established by law.
 Actions by officials that contravene the law or exceed their powers, and infringe the rights of citizens, may be appealed against in a court in the manner prescribed by law.
 Citizens of the Country have the right to compensation for damage resulting from unlawful actions by state organisations and public organisations, or by officials in the performance of their duties.
 
Article 59. Citizens' exercise of their rights and freedoms is inseparable from the performance of their duties and obligations.
 Citizens of the Country are obliged to observe the Constitution of the Country and other laws, comply with the standards of conduct, and uphold the honour and dignity of the Country's citizenship.
 
Article 60. It is the duty of, and matter of honour for, every able-bodied citizen of the Country to work conscientiously in his chosen, socially useful occupation, and strictly to observe labour discipline. Evasion of socially useful work is incompatible with the principles of society.
 
Article 61. Citizens of the Country are obliged to preserve and protect property. It is the duty of a citizen of the Country to combat misappropriation and squandering of state and socially-owned property and to make thrifty use of the people's wealth.
 Persons encroaching in any way on property shall be punished according to the law.
 
Article 62. Citizens of the Country are obliged to safeguard the interests of the Nation, and to enhance its power and prestige.
 Defence of the Country is the sacred duty of every citizen of the Country. Betrayal of the Country is the gravest of crimes against the people.
 
Article 63. Military service in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the Country is an honorable duty of our citizens.
 
Article 64. It is the duty of every citizen of the Country to respect the national dignity of other citizens, and to strengthen friendship of the nations and nationalities of the multinational states within our country.
 
Article 65. A citizen of the Country is obliged to respect the rights and lawful interests of other persons, to be uncompromising toward anti-social behaviour, and to help maintain public order.
 
Article 66. Citizens of the Country are obliged to concern themselves with the upbringing of children, to train them for socially useful work, and to raise them as worthy members of society. Children are obliged to care for their parents and help them.
 
Article 67. Citizens of the Country are obliged to protect nature and conserve its riches.
 
Article 68. Concern for the preservation of historical monuments and other cultural values is a duty and obligation of citizens of the Country.

Article 69. It is the internationalist duty of citizens of the Country to promote friendship and co-operation with peoples of other lands and help maintain and strengthen world peace.

If you haven't guessed by now, this is a slightly modified version of Chapter 7 of the 1977 Constitution of the USSR. Welcome to the new Socialist Society.

PS: the translation of "Working class" in Russian is 'Proletariat'