Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes
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There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.
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Compassion is the desire that moves the individual self to widen the scope of its self-concern to embrace the whole of the universal self.
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Now who are the individuals who are the greatest benefactors of the living generation of mankind? I should say: Confucius and Lao-Tse; the Buddha; the Prophets of Israel and Judah; Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad; and Socrates.
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The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
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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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Now 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 which they fail to meet.
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The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.
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Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
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On this showing, the nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.
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… the dogma that History is just 'one damned thing after another....'
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So-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question.
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Man’s true end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever. The source of this quotation (with 'chief' in place of 'true') is the Westminster Shorter Catechism, http://www.reformed.org/documents/wsc/index.html?_top=http://www.reformed.org/documents/WSC.html.