Top 38 Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes
#1. 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
#3. 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
#5. Adversity in the things of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#6. Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#7. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#9. 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
#10. The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#14. Immaturity means self-centeredness, inability to compromise, to rise above hurt feelings, to postpone immediate pleasures in favor of future benefits, or to do unpleasant chores when they need to be done.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. Material power that is not counterbalanced by adequate spiritual power, that is, by love and wisdom, is a curse
Arnold J. Toynbee
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#23. 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
#24. Angkor is perhaps the greatest of Man's essays in rectangular architecture that has yet been brought to life.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#25. 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
#27. On this showing, the nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#28. The immense cities lie basking on the beaches of the continent like whales that have taken to the land.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#29. I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#30. The aim of all education is, or should be, to teach people to educate themselves.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#31. 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
#32. So-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. The course of human history consists of a series of encounters between individual human beings and God in which each man and woman or child, in turn, is challenged by God to make his free choice between doing God's will and refusing to do it.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#36. No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#37. 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
#38. 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
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
