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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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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
Grows
Challenge
Break
Meet
Confronts
Belief
Civilization
Successive
Come
Birth
Civilizations
Believe
Failing
Proceed
Pieces
Successfully
Grow
Responding
Challenges
Fail

More quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee

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Adversity in the things of this world opens the door for spiritual salvation.
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There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.
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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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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
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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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Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
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Man's true end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.
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Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm.
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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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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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Angkor is perhaps the greatest of Man's essays in rectangular architecture that has yet been brought to life.
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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
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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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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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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.
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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Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
Arnold J. Toynbee
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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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Religion holds the solution to all problems of human relationship, whether they are between parents and children or nation and nation. Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.
Arnold J. Toynbee