A Quote by Arnold J. Toynbee

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. — © Arnold J. Toynbee
Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.
Suicide is part murder, revenge on those who hurt you, just as murder is part suicide, for a murderer knows he risks losing his life.
One of my favorite games when I was a kid was 'murder/suicide'. Dad would show us a photo and ask us: 'Is it a murder or a suicide ?'
Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
[On suicide:] It's the only cause of death that can be used as a noun to describe the dead person. If you die of cancer you are not called 'a cancer.' If someone else shoots you, you are not referred to as 'a murder.' But if you shoot yourself, you are labeled as a suicide. Your death becomes your definition.
They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide.
Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.
A man lusts to become a god... and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?
I'm on the verge of suicide, so what's murder?
Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide.
Killing time is not murder, it is suicide.
To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.
If you are killing time, it's not murder. It's suicide.
Do you have to do murder? Do we have to do murder? Sure we have to do murder. There are only two subjects--a woman's chastity, and murder. Nobody's interested in chastity any more. Murder's all we got to write stories about.
We hear war called murder. It is not; it is suicide.
It isn't possible to kill part of your “self” unless you kill yourself first. If you ruin your conscious personality, the so-called ego-personality, you deprive the self of its real goal, namely to become real itself. The goal of life is the realization of the self. If you kill yourself you abolish that will of the self to become real, but it may arrest your personal development inasmuch it is not explained. You ought to realise that suicide is murder, since after suicide there remains a corpse exactly as with any ordinary murder. Only it is yourself that has been killed.
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