Quote

The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

Irving Babbitt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Irving Babbitt
Age: 67 †
Born: 1865
Born: August 2
Died: 1933
Died: July 15
Journalist
Literary Critic
Dayton
Ohio
Need
Humanities
Needs
Defended
Theology
Physical
Needed
Humanity
Science
Encroachments
Today
Encroachment

More quotes by Irving Babbitt

Image
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
Image
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
Image
The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.
Irving Babbitt
Image
Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.
Irving Babbitt
Image
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
Image
Very few of the early Italian humanists were really humane.
Irving Babbitt
Image
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
Image
It is well to open one's mind but only as a preliminary to closing it ... for the supreme act of judgment and selection.
Irving Babbitt
Image
According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication.
Irving Babbitt
Image
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 is himself spiritually the underdog.
Irving Babbitt
Image
Commercialism is laying its great greasy paw upon everything including the irresponsible quest of thrills so that, whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama.
Irving Babbitt
Image
The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.
Irving Babbitt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself.
Irving Babbitt
Image
If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.
Irving Babbitt
Image
Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.
Irving Babbitt
Image
Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution.
Irving Babbitt
Image
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
Image
The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service.
Irving Babbitt