Arnold J. Toynbee

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Arnold Joseph Toynbee (April 14, 1889 – October 22, 1975) was a British historian and the nephew of Arnold Toynbee.

[edit] Quotes

Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
- As quoted in Reader's Digest (October 1958)
- Civilization is a movement, not a condition. It is a voyage, not a harbor.
  - As quoted in The Social Welfare Forum (1968) by the National Conference on Social Welfare

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
- Statemetn of 1964, as quoted in Mindfulness edited by Ellen J. Langer, p. 133; also in Social Creativity Vol. 2 (1999) edited by Alfonso Montuori and Ronald E. Purser

We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.
- Surviving the Future (1971), Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 95

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.
- The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose (1976)

... the dogma that History is just 'one damned thing after another....'
- "Law and Freedom in History," A Study of History, Vol. 2 (1957). The embedded quotation is attributable to Elbert Hubbard.

So-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question.

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.

Toynbee predicted: "At the close of this century, the world would be dominated by the West, but that in the 21st century 'India will conquer her conquerors.'"
- Swami Prabhavananda, The Spiritual Heritage of India: A Clear Summary of Indian Philosophy and Religion (1979)

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Arnold J. Toynbee