Arnold J. Toynbee Quotes

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

No nation has friends only interests.

A state worthy of the name has no friends—only interests. [This is a generalized expression of British Prime Minister John Henry Temple's statement a century earlier.

I don't believe foreign policy is about altruism.

It is the natural desire of each nation to use the other as an instrument of its own purposes and policies. By dint of our mutual dependence, your influence is amplified by our power. Our power is made more responsible and more effective by your influence.

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

The origins of the principle of the balance of power are lost in the mists of history.

[Describing Russia:] ... the most realistic regime in the world—no ideals.

Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.

Every major power always seeks to justify its action on moral grounds. Such behaviour is almost as old as the hills. The west has been a particularly vigorous exponent of this credo; and there is no reason to believe that China, for example, will be any different. But behind the moral rhetoric invariably lies interest and ideology.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

… realpolitik

The pursuit of one's own interest seems to be the rule for international relations, without the common good of humanity being taken into consideration.

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent …

The simple fact about alliances is that different nations have their own interests.

For the moment it appeared to me that the United States was trying to save itself at the expense of Britain.

Foreign policy is not philanthropy.

We had to avoid wounding Austria too severely; we had to avoid leaving behind in her any unnecessary bitterness of feeling or desire for revenge; we ought rather to reserve the possibility of becoming friends again with our adversary of the moment, and in any case to regard the Austrian state as a piece on the European chessboard and the renewal of friendly relations as a move open to us. If Austria were severely injured, she would become the ally of France and of every other opponent of ours; she would even sacrifice her anti-Russian interests for the sake of revenge on Prussia.

In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.

Is the balance of power a fixed and unalterable standard? Or is it not a standard perpetually varying, as civilization advances, and as new nations spring up, and take their place among established political communities?