“They rushed into it with their eyes open because they could not resist the bait.”
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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“The Greek and Turkish pawns carried on the game of the French and English players. This pawnplaying, however, has not been so odiously cold and disingenuous as an analysis makes it appear. The trap in which the victims have been caught in order to be exploited was not cunningly hidden. They rushed into it with their eyes open because they could not resist the bait.”
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.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary sourceMore quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee →
“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 source“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“Wine is a grand thing,” I said. “It makes you forget all the bad.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source