Irving Babbitt - True Quotes

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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

The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.

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

The true dualism I take to be the contrast between two wills, one of which is felt as vital impulse (élan vital) and the other as vital control (frein vital).

Irving Babbitt