“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
The World and the West (Primary source)
Arnold Toynbee’s The World and the West, based on his 1952 BBC Reith Lectures, reverses the usual story of Western expansion by asking how non-Western societies experienced and responded to Western intrusion.
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“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? A power-loom or a locomotive is obviously a tool for this purpose, as well as a gun, an aeroplane, or a bomb. But all tools are not of the material kind; there are spiritual tools as well, and these are the most potent that Man has made. A creed, for instance, can be a tool; and, in the new round in the competition between Russia and the West that began in 1917, the Russians this time threw into their scale of the balances a creed [communism] that weighed as heavily against their Western competitors’ material tools.”
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“A life which does not go into action is a failure.”
— 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“The statesmen miscalculated again. Their fellow-countrymen had the means to carry out their policy but not the will; their pawns had the will without the means.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary sourceMore quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee →
“Functionally oriented design of this kind has always been strongly influenced by technological development, and will continue to be so in the future. The Braun pocket radios that we designed at the end of the 1950s would not have been possible without the new transistor technology at the time. Transistors were not only far smaller than valves, they also required much less power. That meant that for the first time it was possible to make a radio receiver that you could literally put in your pocket.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Let every new year find you a better man.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source