Skip to content

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 (1948)

Another quote →

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)

All Arnold J. Toynbee quotes →

Attribution

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.