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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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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
Cannot
Worth
Men
Strange
Love
Situation
Fulfill
Life
Purpose
Acceptable
Values
Absolutes
Difficult
Absolute
Death
Save
Makes
Value

More quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.
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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.
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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.
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No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field.
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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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History is a vision of God's creation on the move.
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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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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Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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
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Nothing fails like success when you rely on it too much.
Arnold J. Toynbee