Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.

Arnold J. Toynbee

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Arnold J. Toynbee's quotes

Arnold J. Toynbee

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America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

Arnold J. Toynbee

A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The immense cities lie basking on the beaches of the continent like whales that have taken to the land.

Arnold J. Toynbee

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.

Arnold J. Toynbee

I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.

Arnold J. Toynbee

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

Arnold J. Toynbee

I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

Arnold J. Toynbee

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.

Arnold J. Toynbee

History is a vision of God's creation on the move.

Arnold J. Toynbee

History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don't use the stuff well, it might as well be dead.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.

Arnold J. Toynbee

A life which does not go into action is a failure.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Civilization is a movement and not a condition a voyage and not a harbor.

Arnold J. Toynbee

We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.

Helen Keller

Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.

Rollo May

Tolerance it a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbors of tolerance are apathy and weakness.

James Goldsmith

Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.

Frank Moore Colby

When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.

Paul Wellstone

Harold Wilson is going around the country stirring up apathy.

William Whitelaw

I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy.

Alan Rickman

Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.

Conor Cruise O'Brien

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Robert M. Hutchins

The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.

William Lloyd Garrison

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

Helen Keller

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.

Jimmy Buffett

People have moved beyond apathy, beyond skepticism into deep cynicism.

Elliot Richardson

Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.

Dan Millman

In communications, familiarity breeds apathy.

William Bernbach

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Charles de Montesquieu

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.

Cyril Connolly

I was faced more with apathy than opposition.

Adrian Cronauer

Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.

Horace Greeley

HIV infection and AIDS is growing - but so too is public apathy. We have already lost too many friends and colleagues.

David Geffen

I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.

Leo Buscaglia

Arnold J. Toynbee

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

William Safire

All hippies around now just represent complete apathy.

Joe Strummer

Britain is rich in radicalism, and anyone who says that our society has drifted into fatalism and apathy should get out more.

Geoff Mulgan

Fear is better than apathy because fear makes us do something.

Emiliano Salinas