“A cultivated class, for example, finds most difficulty in getting on with another which has acquired part—but only part—of its culture and customs.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (Primary source)
The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilisations is a detailed, largely firsthand account of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and its wider political context.
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“This phenomenon in the relationships between people of different civilisations is a commonplace in those between individuals of different classes in the same society. A cultivated class, for example, finds most difficulty in getting on with another which has acquired part—but only part—of its culture and customs, and which seeks on this account to establish the convention that no class distinction is there, when both parties are secretly aware of its presence in its intercourse with members of one which makes no pretensions to similarity. In this relationship both parties can be themselves, and they can each enjoy the experience of discovering the other’s distinctive qualities, without the discomfort of detecting insincerity in his attitude and their own.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
“Technology is, of course, only a long Greek name for a bag of tools; and we have to ask ourselves: What are the tools that count in this competition in the use of tools as means to power?”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“History, in the objective meaning of the word, is the process of change; in the subjective meaning, it is the study of how and why one situation changes into another.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary sourceMore quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee →
“The person who is the star of a previous era is often the last one to adapt to change.”
— Andrew S. Grove Primary source“No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.”
— Amelia Earhart Disputed“Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes him necessary to society.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Real enjoyment consists not in what one enjoys but in the idea.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary sourceClass Customs Sincerity Diversity