An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.
Irving BabbittFurthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards.
Irving BabbittWe 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.
Irving BabbittCommercialism is laying its great greasy paw upon everything including the irresponsible quest of thrills; so that, whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama.
Irving Babbitt