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Quotes of the Day for 14 May 2005 - Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Arnold Joseph Toynbee was born at London on this day in 1889, and educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford. Outside the two world wars he was a history teacher, at his alma mater Balliol, the University of London, the London School of Economics, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He worked for the British Foreign Office during both wars and attended the peace talks after them. Along with a host of other works, his magnum opus was the twelve-volume A Study of History, published between 1934 and 1961. Toynbee focused on civilizations as a whole rather than nations or short periods of time. And on a truly trivial note, to refer to a historian as "toynbeeesque" is to use the only English-language word with three Es in a row.

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

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

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

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.

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.
     - All from Arnold Joseph Toynbee, 1889 - 1975

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