46 Quotes by Irving Babbitt

If quantitatively the American achievement is impressive, qualitatively it is somewhat less satisfying.

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.

Very few of the early Italian humanists were really humane.

The papacy again, representing the traditional unity of European civilization, has also shown itself unable to limit effectively the push of nationalism.

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.

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.

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.

One should, therefore, in the interests of democracy itself seek to substitute the doctrine of the right man for the doctrine of the rights of man.