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All Polly Toynbee Quotes
How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?
Polly Toynbee

53% of people like this quote
This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.
Polly Toynbee

53% of people like this quote
The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty - which also ranks highly.
Polly Toynbee

52% of people like this quote
Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year.
Polly Toynbee

51% of people like this quote
Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified.
Polly Toynbee

50% of people like this quote
But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith.
Polly Toynbee

49% of people like this quote
But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools.
Polly Toynbee

47% of people like this quote
My Lords temporal, today is the day to rise up against the regiment of Lords spiritual and proclaim the values of enlightenment, compassion and common sense.
Polly Toynbee

45% of people like this quote
But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.
Polly Toynbee

44% of people like this quote
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