“Biologists tell us that animal species which have adapted themselves too nicely to highly specialized environments are at a dead end and have no future in the evolutionary process.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
A Study of History (Primary source)
A Study of History is a monumental multi-volume inquiry into the origins, development, and disintegration of civilizations across the span of human history. Conceived as a comparative study on an exceptionally broad scale, the work examines a wide range of civilizations—including Western, Islamic, Hindu, and East Asian societies—in an effort to discern recurrent patterns in their historical development.
More about “A Study of History” →
“Thereby they have set their feet on the path of retrogression. Biologists tell us that animal species which have adapted themselves too nicely to highly specialized environments are at a dead end and have no future in the evolutionary process. That is exactly the fate of the arrested civilizations.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
“Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“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“It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal behind it.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary sourceMore quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee →
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Disputed“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source