Toynbee Quotes & Sayings
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Top Toynbee Quotes
The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese
and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. — Eric Hoffer
Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity. — Arnold Toynbee
Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God. — Arnold J. Toynbee
But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes. — Polly Toynbee
I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electricity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land. — Arnold J. Toynbee
But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools. — Polly Toynbee
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
We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education. — 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
I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills. — Arnold J. Toynbee
Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs, it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually, just as we monitor money and GDP. — Polly Toynbee
It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy. — Polly Toynbee
A bomb under the West car park at Twickenham on an international day would end fascism in England for a generation. — Philip Toynbee
My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help. — Polly Toynbee
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
Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified. — Polly 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
This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition. — Polly 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
Angkor is perhaps the greatest of Man's essays in rectangular architecture that has yet been brought to life. — Arnold J. Toynbee
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 Joseph Toynbee
So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime. — Polly Toynbee
Toynbee emphasized the difference between technological-material progress and true progress, which he defined as spiritualization. He recognized that the Western world was indeed undergoing a crisis, which he attributed to the abandonment of religion for the cult of technology, nationalism, and militarism. For him this crisis had a name: secularism. If you know the cause of an illness, you can also find a cure: The religious heritage in all its forms had to be reintroduced, especially the "heritage of Western Christianity." Rather than a biologistic vision, he offered a voluntaristic one focused on the energy of creative minorities and exceptional individuals. — Pope Benedict XVI
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization. — 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
We are not doomed to make history repeat itself; it is open to us, through our own efforts, to give history, in our case, some new and unprecedented turn. As human beings, we are endowed with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Some historians hold that history is just one damned thing after another. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
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
A life which does not go into action is a failure. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty - which also ranks highly. — Polly Toynbee
If it's to be, it's up to me.
to which I add;
If not now ... then when? — Andrew Toynbee
Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace. — Arnold Joseph 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 supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. — Arnold J. Toynbee
My Lords temporal, today is the day to rise up against the regiment of Lords spiritual and proclaim the values of enlightenment, compassion and common sense. — Polly Toynbee
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
The only real struggle in the history of the world ... is between the vested interest and social justice. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions? — Polly Toynbee
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
Catch-22 is the greatest satirical work in English since Erewhon ... remarkable ... This is a book that I could wish everyone to read. It is a book which should help us feel more clearly — Philip 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
Adversity in the things of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation. — 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
The equation of religion with belief is rather recent. — 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
They tried to substitute for Christianity a body of dogmas called "dialectical materialism." As Orestes Brownson pointed out in 1849, and as Arnold Toynbee has also written, communism was really a kind of caricature of Christianity, borrowing certain of its moral affirmations, imitating its dogmas, and even appropriating some of its phrases. This made communism all the more dangerous: for the superficial similarities between Christian morality and the pretended Soviet morality sometimes deluded Americans and people in other free states into thinking that communism had high moral aspirations. — Russell Kirk
Encounters taking the form of challenge-and-response are the most illuminating kind of events a for student of human affairs if he believes, as I believe, that one of the most distinctive characteristics of Man is the he is partially free to make choices ... Encounters are the occasions in human life on which freedom and creativity come into play and on which new things are brought into existence. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
You react to crisis the right way. You remember what Toynbee says? His theory of challenge and response applies not only to nations, but to individuals. Some nations and some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you're going to harden. — Pat Frank
The aim of all education is, or should be, to teach people to educate themselves. — Arnold J. Toynbee
Is anyone serious about the politics of happiness? David Cameron dipped a toe in the water, using the word lightly, but denying the hard policies it implies. Labour shies away from it, but should take up the challenge. — Polly Toynbee
The immense cities lie basking on the beaches of the continent like whales that have taken to the land. — 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
Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year. — Polly 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
I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil. — Arnold J. Toynbee
The West has never been all of the world that matters. The West has not been the only actor on the stage of modern history even at the peak of the West's power (and this peak has perhaps now already been passed) ... It has not been the West that has been hit by the world; it has been the world that has been hit - and hit hard - by the West. — Arnold J. Toynbee
No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field. — Arnold J. Toynbee
Material power that is not counterbalanced by adequate spiritual power, that is, by love and wisdom, is a curse — Arnold J. Toynbee
Nothing fails like success when you rely on it too much. — 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
The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
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
One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives. — Polly 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
The art of handling university students is to make oneself appear, and this almost ostentatiously, to be treating them as adults ... — Arnold Joseph 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
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
The campaign of anti-Islamic slander was so successful that to this day some textbooks in European and American schools refer to Muhammad as having epilepsy, the Qur'an as being copied from Bible, Muslim armies forcing conversions on people (by the sword), and Islam as being against science and learning. All of these are quite untrue, and enlightened Western authors from Arnold Toynbee and Bertrand Russell to Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito have been dispelling these myths on book after book for decades; nevertheless, the message hasn't reached the masses, who still believe numerous myths concerning Islam. — Yahiya Emerick
Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body ... Someone who accepts - as I myself do, taking it on trust - the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith. — Polly Toynbee
Nothing keeps people together like the exalted conviction that they alone are to be spared that eternal anguish of hell fire to which everyone else will be condemned. — Polly 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
Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust of women's bodies. — Polly Toynbee
We do not know what the future of Europe will be. Here we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself at the service of all humankind. — Pope Benedict XVI
Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee
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
In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plus 76% of Church Times readers. — Polly Toynbee
I do not know of anything in modern poetry as violently hostile to contemporary life as was the poetry of T. S. Eliot, which so perfectly fitted the mood of the young people between the two wars. I also find much more benevolence towards humanity in younger historians than there was in Spengler or in Toynbee. Still, it is not difficult to sense the disgust of the intellectuals at the new prosperous working class, 'with their eyes glued to the television screen,' who have become indifferent to radical ideas. — Dennis Gabor
Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal. — Polly Toynbee
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
I believe that a religious conversion is the only way to stimulate the peoples of the industrialized nations to be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of esho funi (the oneness of self and environment) ... I wish the entire world would accept as an item of religious faith the concept of esho funi and its moral obligations. — Arnold J. Toynbee
Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless. — Polly Toynbee
History is a vision of God's creation on the move. — Arnold J. Toynbee
People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death. — Polly Toynbee
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
Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying. — Polly Toynbee
Openness about death has led to greater care about all aspects of dying. — Polly Toynbee
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
In the index to the six hundred odd pages of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, abridged version, the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton do not occur yet their cosmic quest destroyed the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a walled-in universe and transformed the European landscape, society, culture, habits and general outlook, as thoroughly as if a new species had arisen on this planet. — Arthur Koestler
Society is the total network of relations between human beings. The components of society are thus not human beings but relations between them. — Arnold Joseph 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 Joseph Toynbee
Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability. — Polly Toynbee