“As human beings, we are endowed with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
This quote is commonly attributed to Arnold J. Toynbee, but I have not been able to locate a primary source. Use with caution in academic or professional contexts.
“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 law of nature is, do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“All our science lacks a human side.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source