Irving Babbitt

“The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.”

“The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people.”

“Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.”

“We must not, however, be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who, in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention, disregarded also the humane aspiration.”

“Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in terms of work or of enjoyment.”

“Tell him, on the contrary, that he needs, in the interest of his own happiness, to walk in the path of humility and self-control, and he will be indifferent, or even actively resentful.”

“The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.”

“We may affirm, then, that the main drift of the later Renaissance was away from a humanism that favored a free expansion toward a humanism that was in the highest degree disciplinary and selective.”

“A man needs to look, not down, but up to standards set so much above his ordinary self as to make him feel that he is himself spiritually the underdog.”

“An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.”

“The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.”

“Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.”

“For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual.”

“Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution.”

“Very few of the early Italian humanists were really humane.”

“A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism.”

“The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy.”

“Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.”

“To harmonize the One with the Many, this is indeed a difficult adjustment, perhaps the most difficult of all, and so important, withal, that nations have perished from their failure to achieve it.”

“According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication.”