“Now civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
Civilization on Trial (Primary source)
Civilization on Trial is a collection of thirteen essays, written over roughly two decades, that Toynbee binds together with a common outlook on the meaning of history. Though several pieces predate it, the book is preoccupied with the post-war moment, examining the moral and spiritual challenges facing humanity and arguing that Western civilization stands at a critical juncture.
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“Now civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet. Not unnaturally, there are challenges that present themselves in the histories of more than one civilization. And the peculiar interest of Graeco-Roman history for us lies in the fact that the Greek civilization broke down in the fifth century b.c. through failing to find a successful response to the very challenge which is confronting our own Western civilization in our own lifetime.”
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 →
“Perhaps wars weren’t won any more. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years’ War.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“No one comes back from the dead; no one has come into the world without weeping. No one asks when one wants to come in; no one asks when one wants to go out.”
— Søren Kierkegaard Primary source“The Internet is a tidal wave. It changes the rules. It is an incredible opportunity as well as incredible challenge.”
— Bill Gates Primary source