Carl L. Becker Quotes

Serious thinkers are few, and the world is ruled by crude ideas.

To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false, is essentially a meaningless question.

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?

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.

The logic of all this seems to be that it is all right for young people in a democracy to learn about any civilization or social theory that is not dangerous, but that they should remain entirely ignorant of any civilization or social theory that might be dangerous on the ground that what you don't know can't hurt you ... a complete denial of the democratic principle that the general diffusion of knowledge and learning through the community is essential to the preservation of free government.

No class of Americans, so far as I know, has ever objected . . . to any amount of governmental meddling if it appeared to benefit that particular class.

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

History is the memory of things said and done.

My own mind is my own church.

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.

Logic is something the mind has created to conceal its timidity, a hocus-pocus designed to give formal validity to conclusions we are willing to accept if everybody else in our set will too.

Corporations have at different times been so far unable to distinguish freedom of speech from freedom of lying that their freedom has to be curbed.

All historians, even the most scientific, have bias, if in no other sense than the determination not to have any.

Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.

History is an indispensable even though not the highest form of intellectual endeavor.

The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.