This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
The ultimate objective of social futurism [is] not merely the transcendence of technocracy and the substitution of more humane, more far-sighted, more democratic planning, but the subjection of the process of evolution itself to conscious human guidance. For this is the supreme instant, the turning point in history at which man either vanquishes the processes of change or vanishes, at which, from being the unconscious puppet of evolution he becomes either its victim or its master.
To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history.
The poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen… Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of nature of universals, whereas those of history are of singulars.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
My own view of history is that human beings do have genuine freedom to make choices. Our destiny is not predetermined for us; we determine it for ourselves.
Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.
Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals: it is this history which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation.
Belief | Doctrine | Dogma | Events | History | Salvation | System |
How much happier would the religious history of the world been if the different religions and sects had seen their role as contributors to a common stream of seeking for the Ultimate, which always escapes the conceptual net, yet perennially inspires the search. Actually many in the modern world are becoming tolerant toward religion in the wrong way. Their tolerance is not a product of understanding but is bred of indifference. They see the conventional forms in which religion is practiced as empty shells although they excite in their defense belligerent intolerance.
Defense | History | Indifference | Intolerance | Religion | Search | Understanding | World | Wrong |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.
Civilization | History |