Carl L. Becker famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

History is an indispensable even though not the highest form of intellectual endeavor.
-- Carl L. Becker

#History #Intellectual #Form
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 to control, not society, but ourselves - a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet rather than to foretell the future.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Mind #Important #Moral
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 their minds are already predisposed to accept
-- Carl L. Becker

#Book #Men #Ideas
Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Meaning Of Life #Fundamentals #Answers
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 tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Writing #Historical #Mind
Serious thinkers are few, and the world is ruled by crude ideas.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Ideas #World #Serious
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 time for private profit is not to abuse the right of free speech, whether it is a violation of the law or not. But again the practical question is, how much lying for private profit is to be permitted by law?
-- Carl L. Becker

#Lying #Law #Abuse
The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Men #Ironic #Significance
History is the memory of things said and done.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Memories #History #Done
To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Philosophy #Rights #Independence
My own mind is my own church.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Life #Mind #Church
Virginia was in fact a landowning aristocracy, without nobility or merchant class, or any considerable small peasant farming class; and the other Southern colonies, except North Carolina, were on the whole similar to Virginia in these respects.
-- Carl L. Becker

#Virginia #Class #Southern

You may also like:

Andrew Dickson White
Diplomat
Bernard Bailyn
Historian
Charles A. Beard
Historian
Chief Joseph
Ezra Cornell
New York State Senator
Frederick Jackson Turner
Historian
George Bancroft
Historian
Harry Elmer Barnes
Historian
Helen Hunt Jackson
Poet
Henry Ford
Industrialist
J. Willard Gibbs
Scientist
James Harvey Robinson
Historian
James Madison
4th U.S. President
John Maurice Clark
Economist
Leopold von Ranke
Historian
Mary Ritter Beard
Historian
Peter Gay
Professor
Richard Hofstadter
Historian
Thorstein Veblen
Economist
William Jennings Bryan
Former United States Secretary of State