The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers is a 1926 book by Will Durant, in which he profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, beginning with Socrates and Plato and on through Friedrich Nietzsche.

[1][2] They proved so popular they were assembled into a single book and published in hardcover form by Simon & Schuster in 1926.

In a foreword to the readers in the second edition of the book, Durant expresses his acknowledgement for the criticism that the book received as to how it does not include philosophers from the Asian continent, most notably Confucius, Buddha and Adi Shankara.

[4] This work is the source of the popular quote, typically misattributed to Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The phrase was originated by Durant when discussing Aristotle's work.