Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual.

Furthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards.

Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself.

The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.

Anyone who thus looks up has some chance of becoming worthy to be looked up to in turn.

Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution.

The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards.

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.

We must not, however, be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who, in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention, disregarded also the humane aspiration.

Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in terms of work or of enjoyment.

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

A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice.

According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication.

Very few of the early Italian humanists were really humane.

The papacy again, representing the traditional unity of European civilization, has also shown itself unable to limit effectively the push of nationalism.

The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

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.

Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.

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.

If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism.

The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy 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.

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.

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 remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses.

The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy.

Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.

To harmonize the One with the Many, this is indeed a difficult adjustment, perhaps the most difficult of all, and so important, withal, that nations have perished from their failure to achieve it.

If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.

The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service.

Tell him, on the contrary, that he needs, in the interest of his own happiness, to walk in the path of humility and self-control, and he will be indifferent, or even actively resentful.

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

The humanitarian would of course have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service.

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.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

With the absence of a flu vaccination last year, I did not take a flu shot; but there is still some immunity that carries over from year to year; but about every 30 years, there is a major change in the genetics of the flu virus.

And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope-nothing else.

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

I wish you to inform the Court that my absence, though deliberate, is not intended in any way to be disrespectful. Nor is it prompted by any fear of the punishment which might be inflicted on me.

Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?