"Of the twenty-two civilizations that appear in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. All nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith From spiritual faith to great courage From courage to liberty From liberty to abundance From abundance to selfishness From selfishness to complacency From complacency to apathy From apathy to dependency From dependency back again into bondage."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomPeople from London
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
In Joe D. Batten and Gail Batten, The Confidence Chasm (New York: American Management Association, 1972) p. 118
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Arnold J. Toynbee
1889 – 1975
britischer Kulturtheoretiker und Geschichtsphilosoph
55 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Arnold J. Toynbee →
Related Quotes
"[T]he dogma that History is just "one damned thing after another...""
"History [is] a vision of God's creation on the move."
"The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration i…"
"There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics."
"When God made Baluchistan, he laughed."
"Our western science is a child of moral virtues; and it must now become the father of further moral virtues if its ex…"
"I don’t believe a committee can write a book. ... It can, oh, govern a country, perhaps. But I don’t believe it can w…"
"[T]he equation of religion with belief is rather recent."
"India is the central link in a chain of regional civilizations that extends from Japan in the far north-east to Irela…"
"The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are…"