Arnold J. Toynbee quotes - page 3

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)
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. View quote
Arnold J. Toynbee
No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field. View quote
Arnold J. Toynbee
The local national state, invested with the attributes of sovereignty - is an abomination of desolation standing in the place where it ought not. It has stood in that place now - demanding and receiving human sacrifices from its poor deluded votaries - for four or five centuries. View quote
Arnold J. Toynbee
Societies, not states, are 'the social atoms' with which students of history have to deal. View quote
Arnold J. Toynbee
No collection of facts is ever complete, because the universe is without bounds. And no synthesis or interpretation is ever final, because there are always fresh facts to be found after the first collection has been provisionally arranged. View quote
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, in extremis or post mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two. To date, these two plagues have been deadly enough, in partnership, to kill off nineteen out of twenty representatives of this recently evolved species of human society; but, up to now, the deadliness of these scourges has had a saving limit. View quote
Arnold J. Toynbee
The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality. View quote
Arnold J. Toynbee
I guess that both the West and the world are getting to turn away from man - worshipping ideologies - Communism and secular individualism alike - and become converted to an Oriental religion corning neither from Russia nor from the West. I guess that this will be the Christian religion that came to the Greeks and the Romans from Palestine, with one or two elements in traditional Christianity discarded and replaced by a new element from India, I expect and hope that this avatar of Christianity will include the vision of God as being Love. But I also expect and hope that it will discard the other traditional Christian vIsion of God as being a jealous god, and that it will reject the self-glorification of this jealous god's "chosen people" as being unique. This is where India comes in, with her belief that there may be more than one illuminating and saving approach to the mystery of the universe. View quote
Arnold J. Toynbee