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.

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

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.

It is well to open one's mind but only as a preliminary to closing it ... for the supreme act of judgment and selection.

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.

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

If quantitatively the American achievement is impressive, qualitatively it is somewhat less satisfying.