Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes

A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.

Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.

But a people unable to reform will not be able to preserve its old culture either.

The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people.

We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it's unnecessary and it's not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We're going to need some stronger stuff.

Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo.

In the late 20th century, it became possible to travel between cultures, between the old world and the new, with great ease. So when you go back, you take the changed person with you who, in turn, changes things that otherwise might have stayed the same.

There aren't any looks or customs I wish would come back. Today almost anything goes. Culture constantly devours the past so there's not much that's missing.

Always, some great culture is dying to enrich the soil of new harvests, some civlization is crumbling to rubbish to be the hill of a more beautiful city, some race is spending itself that a lower and more barbarous world may inherit its stored treasure house.

Civilization is not a spontaneous generation with any race or nation known to history, but the torch to be handed down from race to race from age to age.

We see culture as a self-organising thing.

Civilisations which get cut off from their traditions and values do not survive for long.

I do think evolution is an important aspect of keeping a tradition alive. If it freezes and remains very static in its form, it dies, and so a natural evolution has to occur.

A tree lives on its roots. If you change the root, you change the tree. Culture lives in human beings. If you change the human heart the culture will follow.

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there - a source of vital strength.

Culture is just a shambling zombie that repeats what it did in life; bits of it drop off, and it doesn't appear to notice.

Change is no threat to culture.

Culture is not made up but something that evolves which is human.

I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.

We regard those other cultures, such as that of India, where many people live and believe and behave much as they did 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, as undeveloped.

Things change in different countries as people grow, and as generations change.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

Black culture is a fight. We want to hold on to what we are, but sometimes the things that we are can be totally negative. You have to think: can't we try something new and not be seen as suspect?