Carl L. Becker Quotes

11 quotes in 179 categories

• My own mind is my own church.
• To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.
• History is the memory of things said and done.
• The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.
• No one can deny that much of our modern advertising is essentially dishonest; and it can be maintained that to lie freely and all the…
• Serious thinkers are few, and the world is ruled by crude ideas.
• All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever…
• Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.
• Generally speaking, men are influenced by books which clarify their own thought, which express their own notions well, or which suggest to them ideas which…
• The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us…
• History is an indispensable even though not the highest form of intellectual endeavor.

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