Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth. The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking action of dominant classes.

True conservatives fear anything that is at odds with the status quo, even to the extent of being unable to recognise when the status quo represents injustice. And reactionary conservatives actually want to tear down the gains of the past.

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.

Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad.

There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery.

Things are politics for a long time before they become history.

America is a conservative country with a small “c” - they want change, but they don’t want too much change too fast.

One of the frustrating tics of our society's progressive vanguard is the assumption that every evil it discovers was entirely invisible in the past, that this generation is the first to wrestle with dominance and cruelty.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

India's a fascinating country. It's constantly changing, but there's still a lot of superstition and backwards thinking.

But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations.

All societies are historical.

In terms of the history of a far reaching movement, 20 years is not that long.

By looking into more details of American history, we can make more sense of what's happening today.

I think all of us thought that by the '70s, at the latest the '80s, all the world's problems would be solved and everyone would be getting along fine. And instead we saw that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year, Robert F. Kennedy died. We saw that it was going to be a lot more difficult than I think we had thought.

I'm fascinated by how much has changed from one generation to another. There are young people growing up now for whom apartheid is just a distant memory and the idea of military service is an abstract notion.

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

In one aspect, my works record the history of the development of Chinese society. Concern about the situation of Chinese reality is one important theme of my works. I am trying to ask, 'How does our society develop? What are the problems in our society? Where is our direction leading?'

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

I think society is both something that's very real and very powerful, but on the whole quite problematic.

You have to look at history as an evolution of society.

For most of human history, there was a ruling class and then there was everybody else. If you were part of everybody else, it wasn't your job to imagine a different future, different ways of doing things. So, imagination is a fairly modern phenomenon.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

I believe in all the qualities of being a liberal. I keep going back to all the great social events in our country's history, starting with the Salem witch trials, where the conservative view was that they're witches and should be burned at the stake, and the liberal view was there's no such thing as witches.

The problem of power will always arise and, since it cannot be solved...will always make trouble. We cannot expect the large-scale societies of the future to be much better than were the societies of the past during the brief periods when they were at their best