Irving Babbitt

(13 votes)   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.

Irving Babbitt
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(10 votes)   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.

Irving Babbitt
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(7 votes)   Furthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards.

Irving Babbitt
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(6 votes)   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
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(6 votes)   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.

Irving Babbitt
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(5 votes)   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.

Irving Babbitt
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(4 votes)   The humanities need to be defended to-day against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

Irving Babbitt
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(4 votes)   The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.

Irving Babbitt
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(2 votes)   The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality.

Irving Babbitt
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(16 votes)   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
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(14 votes)   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.

Irving Babbitt
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(12 votes)   If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.

Irving Babbitt
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(10 votes)   According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication.

Irving Babbitt
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(10 votes)   Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself.

Irving Babbitt
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(10 votes)   Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.

Irving Babbitt
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