A.J. Toynbee quotes

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History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don't use the stuff--well, it mi... - MORE History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don't use the stuff--well, it might as well be dead.

A.J. Toynbee

history

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Nationalism ... is the worship of the collective power of a local human community. Unlike the faith in progress through science, n... - MORE Nationalism ... is the worship of the collective power of a local human community. Unlike the faith in progress through science, nationalism is not a new religion; it is a revival of an old one. This was the religion of the city-states of the pre-Christian Greco-Roman world. It was resuscitated in the West at the Renaissance, and this resuscitation of the Greco-Roman political religion has been far more effective than the resuscitation of the Greco-Roman style of literature, visual art, and architecture. Modern Western nationalism, inspired by Greco-Roman political ideals and institutions, has inherited the dynamism and fanaticism of Christianity. Translated into practice in the American and French Revolutions, it proved to be highly infectious. Today, fanatical nationalism is perhaps 90 percent of the religion of perhaps 90 percent of mankind.

A.J. Toynbee

nationalism | religion

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I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electr... - MORE I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electricity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land.

A.J. Toynbee

nations | public utilities

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Love's way of dealing with us is different from conscience's way. Conscience commands; love inspires. What we do out of love, we d... - MORE Love's way of dealing with us is different from conscience's way. Conscience commands; love inspires. What we do out of love, we do because we want to do it. Love is, indeed, one kind of desire; but it is a kind that takes us out of ourselves and carries us beyond ourselves, in contrast to the kind that is self-seeking--a kind that includes the desire for the "extinguishedness" of Nirvana. Love is freedom; conscience is constraint; yet, in two points, our relation to love is the same as our relation to conscience. We are free to reject love's appeal, as we are free to reject conscience's command; yet love, like conscience, cannot be rebuffed with impunity. Rebuffed, love will continue to importune us; and this for the reason for which a violated conscience does. Love's authority, like conscience's, is absolute. Like conscience, too, love needs no authentication or validation by any authority outside itself. Speculations about love's credentials, or lack of credentials, cannot either enhance or diminish love's absoluteness.

A.J. Toynbee

love | conscience

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America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

A.J. Toynbee

United States

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We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanne... - MORE We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.

A.J. Toynbee

procreation

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We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a det... - MORE We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a determinist. But I also believe that the decisive choice is seldom the latest choice in the series. More often than not, it will turn out to be some choice made relatively far back in the past.

A.J. Toynbee

free will

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Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.

A.J. Toynbee

civilization

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