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.
Interpretation
The quote critiques modern society's preference for superficial abundance over meaningful substance.
Irving Babbitt highlights a societal trend where people prioritize the quantity of information and entertainment, represented by a person lazily reading a Sunday newspaper, over the quality of thought and experience. This reflects a cultural shift toward valuing superficial abundance, suggesting a loss of deeper engagement with life and ideas.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a discussion about consumerism and its effects on culture.
Commercialism 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.
I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.
City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
Grief doesn't change you. It reveals you.
We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world....No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.
The Constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else.
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