Irving Babbitt Quotations

Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself.

Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.

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.

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.

It is well to open one's mind but only as a preliminary to closing it ... for the supreme act of judgment and selection.

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.