“A city that outdistances man’s walking powers is a trap for man.”
— Arnold Toynbee
“A city that outdistances man’s walking powers is a trap for man.”
— Arnold Toynbee
“You should never ask a historian to predict the future—we have enough trouble predicting the past.”
A.J.P. Taylor
I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.
— Arnold Toynbee
The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.
— Edward Gibbon
“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure”.
— Thucydides
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
— Thucydides
“I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.”
— Edward Gibbon
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
— Edward Gibbon
“We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing”
— Pericles, in Herodotus Histories
“Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilisation, when it was but a part of their servitude.”
— Tacitus