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Of the twenty-two civilizations that appear in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. All nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith
From spiritual faith to great courage
From courage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to selfishness
From selfishness to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependency
From dependency back again into bondage.

— Arnold J. Toynbee Attributed

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More quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee

Societies, not states, are 'the social atoms' with which students of history have to deal.

A Study of History (1934)

Compassion is the desire that moves the individual self to widen the scope of its self-concern to embrace the whole of the universal self.

The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose (1976)

The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten.

Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour.

Civilization on Trial (1948)

A life which does not go into action is a failure.

A Study of History (1934)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Arnold J. Toynbee (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.