Irving Babbitt Quotes

37 quotes in 557 categories

• For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual.
• 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,…
• The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.
• 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…
• 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…
• The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality.
• The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy.
• 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…
• 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.
• A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice.
• If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.
• If quantitatively the American achievement is impressive, qualitatively it is somewhat less satisfying.
• Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution.
• The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service.
• The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.
• The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.
• Very few of the early Italian humanists were really humane.
• A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses.
• 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 papacy again, representing the traditional unity of European civilization, has also shown itself unable to limit effectively the push of nationalism.

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