Top 34 Quotes by Irving Babbitt

Furthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards.

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.

If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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