Irving Babbitt - Standards Quotes

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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
Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in terms of work or of enjoyment. If he work in the full ethical sense that I have attempted to define, he is pulling back and disciplining his temperamental self with reference to some standard. In short, his temperamental self is, in an almost literal sense, undergoing conversion. The whole of life may, indeed, be summed up in the words diversion and conversion. Along which of these two main paths are most of us seeking the happiness to the pursuit of which we are dedicated by our Declaration of Independence? The author of this phrase, Thomas Jefferson, remarks of himself: "I am an Epicurean."

Irving Babbitt
True democracy consists not in lowering the standard but in giving everybody, so far as possible, a chance of measuring up to the standard.

Irving Babbitt
It seems to me imperative to re-establish the true dualism—that between vital impulse and vital control—and to this end to affirm the higher will first of all as a psychological fact. The individual needs, however, to go beyond this fact if he is to decide how far he is to exercise control in any particular instance with a primary view to his own happiness: in short, he needs standards. To secure standards, at least critically, he cannot afford, like the Rousseauist, to disparage the intellect.

Irving Babbitt
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
When the element of conversion with reference to a standard is eliminated from life, what remains is the irresponsible quest for thrills.

Irving Babbitt
Those who are filled with concern for the lot of humanity as a whole, especially for the less fortunate portions of it, are wont nowadays to call themselves idealists. We should at least recognize that ideals in this sense are not the same as standards and that they are often indeed the opposite of standards. It would be easy to mention institutions of learning in this country that are at present engaged in breaking down standards in the name of ideals.

Irving Babbitt
The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.

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
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