Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

No single conflict from the past can serve as a reliable model for struggles in the present.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.

History is not a blueprint for present practice.

Party historians go to the past for party purposes; they seek to read into the past the controversies of the present.

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.

No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

Ere we can forecast the future we must understand the present and bring a just sense of proportion to our review of the history of the past.

History is past politics, and politics present history.

Ancient histories provide windows to knowing current affairs.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product.

Trying to recreate for people the ways in which the past was similar to the present is an important part of what a historian has to do, and what a student of foreign policy has to do.

History is a dubious guide to current politics.

It's hard to understand a moment in history when you are in it.

I was very interested in history, but I also thought, you know, history is not that interesting sometimes, and it can feel a bit medicinal.

The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.

I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.

I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems and pleasures.