Arnold J. Toyqnbee (1889–1975,) fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee, was an English historian. He is best known for his twelve-volume Study of History (1934–61,) in which he traced the pattern of growth, maturity, and decay of different civilizations.
Born in London, Toynbee was the nephew of English economist and social reformer Arnold Toynbee and the son-in-law of British classical scholar Gilbert Murray. Toynbee was educated at Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford, where he became a fellow, served in the Foreign Office in both World Wars, and attended the Paris peace conferences (1919, 1946.) He was Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine history at London (1919–24) and director and research professor of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London (1925–55.)
Toynbee’s major work was the much-discussed History of the World (10 vols., 1934–54,) which proposed a philosophy of history based on an analysis of the cyclical development and decline of civilizations that provoked much discussion. He also wrote The World and the West (1952,) Greek Historical Thought (1924,) and War and Civilization (1951.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Arnold J. Toynbee
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Vision, Goals
The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Goals
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.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Birth
Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
A city that outdistances man’s walking powers is a trap for man.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
My own view of history is that human beings do have genuine freedom to make choices. Our destiny is not predetermined for us; we determine it for ourselves.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Choice
The immense cities lie basking on the beaches of the continent like whales that have taken to the land.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Cities
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.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Freedom
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Accomplishment
Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Civilization
The penalty of affluence is that it cuts one off from the common lot, common experience, and common fellowship. In a sense it outlaws one automatically from one’s birthright of membership in the great human family.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Wealth
As human beings, we are endowed with 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
Topics: Choice, Responsibility
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.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Compassion
Anxiety and conscience are a powerful pair of dynamos. Between them, they have ensured that I shall work hard, but they cannot ensure that one shall work at anything worthwhile.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Motivation
Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
Topics: Civilization
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
James Anthony Froude British Historian
C. Northcote Parkinson British Historian
Winston Churchill British Head of State
Graham Greene British Novelist
Harold Macmillan British Head of State
Bertrand A. Russell British Philosopher, Mathematician
Benjamin Jowett British Theologian
Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
Enoch Powell British Politician
B. H. Liddell Hart English Military Journalist, Historian