Arnold Toynbee Quotes (6 Quotes)

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.

There is a kind of intellectual provincialism in the dogma that 'life is just one damned thing after another'.... Human affairs do not become intelligible until they are seen as a whole.

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.

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.

I don't believe a committee can write a book .... It can, oh, govern a country, perhaps, but I don't believe it can write a book.

Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm.