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"If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama."
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"Our nations (India and USA) may have been shaped by differing histories, cultures, and faiths. Yet, our belief in democracy for our nations and liberty for our countrymen is common. The idea that all citizens are created equal is a central pillar of the American constitution. Our founding fathers too shared the same belief and sought individual liberty for every citizen of India."
"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven."
"Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse."
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."
"Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men."
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
Explore more quotes by Irving Babbitt
"Furthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards."
"A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism."
"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."
"If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism."
"For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice."
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