Arnold Joseph Toynbee Quotes

The difference between a humanist and a lunatic is in fact one of degree ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee

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

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

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

When we Westerners call people 'natives' we implicitly take the colour out of our perception of them. We see them as wild animals infesting the country in which we happen to come across them, as part of the local flora and fauna and not as men of like passions with ourselves. So long as we think of them as 'natives' we may exterminate them or, as is more likely to-day, domesticate them and honestly (perhaps not altogether mistakenly) believe that we are improving the breed, but we do not begin to understand them. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee

A life which does not go into action is a failure. ~ Arnold Joseph 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

The Sinic [Chinese] Civilization originated in the Yellow River Valley. The nature of the challenge which started it is unknown but it is clear that the conditions were severe rather than easy.

The Mayan Civilization originated from the challenge of a tropical fores; the Andean from that of a bleak plateau....

The Indic Civilization in Ceylon flourished in the rainless half of the island.....
New England, whose European colonists have played a predominant part in the history of North America, is one of the bleakest and most barren parts of the continent....

The natives of Nyasaland, where life is easy, remained primitive savages down to the advent of invaders from a distant and inclement Europe. ~ Arnold Joseph 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

Societies, not states, are 'the social atoms' with which students of history have to deal. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee

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

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

A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man. ~ Arnold Joseph 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

The only real struggle in the history of the world ... is between the vested interest and social justice. ~ Arnold Joseph 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

Conspiracies no sooner should be formed Than executed. ~ Joseph Addison

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union. ~ Joseph Stalin

The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness ; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience . ~ Matthew Arnold

I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious. ~ Will Smith

Here shall the Press the People's right maintain, Unaw'd by influence and unbrib'd by gain; Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledg'd to Religion, Liberty, and Law. ~ Joseph Story

Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward. It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps. ~ Joseph Alexander Leighton

When you are in accord with nature, nature will yield its bounty. This is something that is coming up in our own consciousness now ... recognizi ng that by violating the environment in which we are living, we are really cutting off the energy and source of our own living. And it's this sense of accord, so that living properly in relation to what has to be done in this world one fosters the vitality of the environment. ~ Joseph Campbell

I loved the physicality of books just as much as the stories inside, the feel of pages between my fingers, the intricacies of classic fonts winding along the neatly lined rows of words. ~ Elizabeth Joy Arnold

Anticipation of happiness can sometimes be as gratifying as its consummation. ~ Gaynor Arnold

You can create opportunity out of importunity.You can create prosperity out of adversity.U can create something out of nothing ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I want to try and be instinctive as a writer and director. ~ Andrea Arnold

Mom always taught me not to use the word hate. As if it were profanity. ~ Tedd Arnold

And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all? ~ Joseph Conrad

Decades of countercultural rebellion have failed to change anything because the theory of society on which the countercultural idea rests is false. We do not live in the Matrix, nor do we live in the spectacle. The world we live in is in fact much more prosaic. It consists of billions of human beings, each pursuing more or less plausible conceptions of the good, trying to cooperate with one another, and doing so with varying degrees of success. There is no single, overarching system that integrates it all. The culture cannot be jammed because there is no such thing as "the culture" or "the system". There is only a hodge-podge of social institutions, most tentatively thrown together, which distribute the benefits and burdens of social cooperation in ways that sometimes we recognize to be just, but that are usually manifestly inequitable. In a world of this type, countercultural rebellion is not just unhelpful, it is positively counterproductive. Not only does it distract energy and effort away from the sort of initiatives that lead to concrete improvements in people's lives, but it encourages wholesale contempt for such incremental changes. ~ Joseph Heath; Andrew Potter

Sincerity is the defence of every misanthrope. ~ David Joseph Cribbin

People are wrong when they tell you that Conrad was on the side of Africans because his story showed great compassion towards them. Africans are not really served by his compassion, whatever it means; they ask for one thing alone – to be seen for what they are: human beings. Conrad pulls back from granting them this favour in Heart of Darkness. ~ Chinua Achebe

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but fear too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions."
"Nice little saloon, isn't it" I said, as if noticing it for the first time.
"At noon I gave no orders for change of course, and the mates whiskers grew much concerned and seemed to be offering themselves to my unduly notice. ~ Joseph Conrad

It saddens me that in many churches today, you hardly hear the name of Jesus being mentioned. Instead, you hear psychology being taught. You hear motivational teachings. You hear 'doing, doing, doing', 'vision, vision, vision' or 'calling, calling, calling'. You hear very little of Jesus Christ and His finished work being taught. Is this what Christianity is about? Your doing, your calling and your vision? ~ Joseph Prince

One rule of conduct that has served me well is this: I don't make an important decision until my heart (intuition) and my head (intellect) are both in agreement. ~ Joseph Deitch

Now whatever you think of the liberal agenda on its merits, until very recently nobody thought the Constitution meant what liberals now say it means. ~ Joseph Sobran

I have not come to seek place, nor to interfere with the business and calling of those men who have borne the burden since the death of Joseph. I throw myself at your feet, and wish to be one of your number, and be a mere member of the Church, and my mere asking to be baptized is an end to all pretensions to authority. ~ Oliver Cowdery

Delays,closed doors are not setbacks but setups God uses to move you forward ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

I think that the people who really accomplish things in this world have to have a little bit of crazy in them. ~ Allison Joseph

I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education. ~ Arnold Schoenberg

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Enabling camera and disk access in the manifest ~ Joseph Howse

Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer. ~ Joseph Addison

You simply can't fit a gallon of desires into a quart container. And yet we continually try to do just that. What we need is a different approach. A bigger bottle would also help. ~ Joseph Deitch

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts ~ Joseph Addison