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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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Arnold J. Toynbee
Age: 85 †
Born: 1889
Born: April 14
Died: 1975
Died: January 1
Diplomat
Historian
University Teacher
London
England
Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee
Well
Dead
Nothing
Use
Life
History
Like
Stuff
Action
Practicals
Used
Practical
Wells
Historical
Might
Intellectual

More quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee

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History is a vision of God's creation on the move.
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
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Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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Angkor is perhaps the greatest of Man's essays in rectangular architecture that has yet been brought to life.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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Adversity in the things of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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Nothing fails like success when you rely on it too much.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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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
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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
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No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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Man's true end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.
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
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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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Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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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
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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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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
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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
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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