Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes

We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

A nation never falls but by suicide.

Historically, if you look at great civilizations, why do they crumble? Is it because of what's outside or because of something internal? It's always internal. It is.

… the nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.

To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.

This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.

It is when empires begin to fall, that they tend to cause the most mayhem.

The nation which is satisfied is lost. The nation which is not progressive is retrograding.

Send me six hundred men who know how to die

As far as we can look back into history, the downfall of any nation can be traced from the moment that nation became timid about spending its best blood.

That contagion idea is so relevant and shows how quickly civilization could self-destruct.

Empires implode from within due to their own excesses.

civilization is a transient sickness.

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

America is on her deathbed.

Most societies die of suicide, not attack.

Civilization is coming to an end, you understand.

In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always. It's their nature. They can't help it.

Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide.

All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.

Tremendous interest in the superficial is very characteristic of cultures in decline.

Amid the sufferings of life on earth, suicide is God's best gift to man.