“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
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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“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“They rushed into it with their eyes open because they could not resist the bait.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“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.”
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“Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“It is important to make a dream of life and a dream reality.”
— Marie Curie Disputed“The axiom that you learn more from your failures than your successes is trite but absolutely true.”
— Bill Gates Primary source