The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people. – Irving Babbitt
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
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. – 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
I is a militant social tendency, working to hold and enlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity of which no one could be guilty who really saw it as a fact of life. – Charles Horton Cooley