“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.
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“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
“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“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“Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“The fact that I am neither a Greek nor a Turk perhaps creates little presumption of my being fair-minded, for Western partisans of non-Western peoples are often more fanatical than their favourites.”
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“Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. This is our permanent state.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson 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“God helps them that help themselves.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source