14 Quotes by Carl L. Becker

The amelioration of society was the very thing Philosophers had most at heart, and surely it was eminently fitting that they should be called in to tutor princes.

History is the memory of things said and done.

My own mind is my own church.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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