Irving Babbitt Quotes

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Irving Babbitt

Profession : Critic

Birth : August 2, 1865

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.

Irving Babbitt

A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses.

Irving Babbitt

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

Irving Babbitt

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

Irving Babbitt

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

Irving Babbitt

A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice.

Irving Babbitt

The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service.

Irving Babbitt

Yet Aristotle's excellence of substance, so far from being associated with the grand style, is associated with something that at times comes perilously near jargon.

Irving Babbitt

To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy.

Irving Babbitt

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.

Irving Babbitt

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

Irving Babbitt

If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism.

Irving Babbitt