Toynbee

“Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.”
― Arnold Toynbee

“Society is the total network of relations between human beings. The components of society are thus not human beings but relations between them.”
― Arnold Toynbee

“We are not doomed to make history repeat itself; it is open to us, through our own efforts, to give history, in our case, some new and unprecedented turn. As human beings, we are endowed with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.”
― Arnold Joseph Toynbee

“Encounters taking the form of challenge-and-response are the most illuminating kind of events a for student of human affairs if he believes, as I believe, that one of the most distinctive characteristics of Man is the he is partially free to make choices.... Encounters are the occasions in human life on which freedom and creativity come into play and on which new things are brought into existence.”
― Arnold J. Toynbee