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The crucial question is whether one is safe in assuming that the immense machinery of power that has resulted from activity of the utilitarian type can be made, on anything like present lines, to serve disinterested ends; whether it will not rather minister to the egoistic aims either of national groups or of individuals.

— Irving Babbitt

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Power

More quotes by 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.

English and the Discipline of Ideas (1920)

To glorify man in his natural and unmodified self is no less surely, even if less obviously, idolatry than actually to bow down before a graven image.

English and the Discipline of Ideas (1920)

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

Democracy and Leadership (1924)

Our most urgent problem just now is how to preserve in a positive and critical form the soul of truth in the two great traditions, classical and Christian, that are crumbling as mere dogma.

English and the Discipline of Ideas (1920)

When we consider carefully what many of our so-called humanists stand for, we find that they are not humanists but humanitarians.

English and the Discipline of Ideas (1920)

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Irving Babbitt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.