Arnold J. Toynbee famous quotes
Last updated: Jul 22, 2024
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The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case... we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don't use the stuff - well, it might as well be dead.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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Material power that is not counterbalanced by adequate spiritual power, that is, by love and wisdom, is a curse
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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Write regularly, day in and day out, at whatever times of day you find that you write best. Don't wait till you feel that you are in the mood. Write, whether you are feeling inclined to write or not.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Anxiety and conscience are a powerful pair of dynamos. Between them, they have ensured that I shall work hard, but they cannot ensure that one shall work at anything worthwhile.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The world's greatest need . . . is mutual confidence. No human being ever knows all the secrets of another's heart. Yet there is enough confidence between mother and child, husband and wife, buyer and seller . . . to make social life a practical possibility. Confidence may be risky, but it is nothing like so risky as mistrust.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
History is a vision of God's creation on the move.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The immense cities lie basking on the beaches of the continent like whales that have taken to the land.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The penalty of affluence is that it cuts one off from the common lot, common experience, and common fellowship. In a sense it outlaws one automatically from one's birthright of membership in the great human family.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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Nothing fails like success when you rely on it too much.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Our western science is a child of moral virtues; and it must now become the father of further moral virtues if its extraordinary material triumphs in our time are not to bring human history to an abrupt, unpleasant and discreditable end.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a determinist. But I also believe that the decisive choice is seldom the latest choice in the series. More often than not, it will turn out to be some choice made relatively far back in the past.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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The last stage but one of every civilisation, is characterised by the forced political unification of its constituent parts, into a single greater whole.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Adversity in the things of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Human dignity can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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Love's way of dealing with us is different from conscience's way. Conscience commands; love inspires. What we do out of love, we do because we want to.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them that they fail to meet.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
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The absolute value of love makes life worth while, and so makes Man's strange and difficult situation acceptable. Love cannot save life from death; but it can fulfill life's purpose.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee -
My advice to any traveler who is traveling in order to learn would be: 'Fight tooth and nail to be permitted to travel in what is technically the least efficient way.'
-- Arnold J. Toynbee
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