Top 15 Carl Lotus Becker Quotes

This was what was finished on October 7, 1868- this idea of Cornell University. Seventy-five years later there is nothing we could wish to add to it, or anything we could wish to take away. And it is after all the idea that was then, as it is now, the important thing, since it was and is the source of all the rest. In response to this idea the first crude buildings were erected, the first books and apparatus were collected, and the first faculty was assembled. In response to this idea the first students came to be enrolled. And on this seventy-fifth anniversary we shall do well to remember that it is not the buildings however splendid, or the quadrangles however beautiful, but this idea brought to birth by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White- the idea of an institution freed from obligation to religious or political or social prejudice, and devoted to the advancement of knowledge in all fruitful fields of inquiry- it was this idea that then have and still gives to Cornell University whatever high significance and enduring value it may have for learning and for the life of man.

The questions we ask are "What?" and "How?" What are the facts and how are they related? If sometimes, in a moment of absent-mindedness or idle diversion, we ask the question "Why?" the answer escapes us.

We look about in vain for any semblance of the old authority, the old absolute, for any suitable foothold from which to get a running start.

We have, among innumerable other works, the Summa theologica, surely one of the most amazing and stupendous products of the human mind. ...never before or since has the wide world been so neatly boxed and compassed, so completely and confidently understood, every detail of it fitted, with such subtle and loving precision, into a consistent and convincing whole.

Since eighteenth century writers employed reason to discredit Christian dogma, a "rationalist" in common parlance came to mean an "unbeliever"… But this use of the word is unfortunate since it obscures the fact that reason may be employed to support faith as well as to destroy it.

Professor Whitehead has recently restored a seventeenth century phrase—"climate of opinion." The phrase is much needed. Whether arguments command assent or not depends less upon the logic that conveys them than upon the climate of opinion in which they are sustained.

Great as our differences are, all of us—professors, politicians, preachers—would no doubt find that we had much in common after all if it were possible to meet in the flesh some distinguished representatives from a former age.

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

What they needed, in addition to many specific grievances against their particular king, was a fundamental presupposition against kings in general. What they needed was a theory of government that provided a place for rebellion, that made it respectable, and even meritorious under certain circumstances.

The Declaration was essentially an attempt to prove that rebellion was not the proper word for what they were doing.

The primary purpose of the Declaration was not to declare independence, but to proclaim to the world the reasons for declaring independence. It was intended as a formal justification of an act already accomplished.

Three days after Richard Henry Lee introduced the Resolution of Independence, it was voted to appoint a committee to "prepare a declaration to the effect of the said first resolution." The committee, appointed on the following day, consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. On the 28 of June, the committee reported to Congress the draft of a declaration which, with modifications, was finally agreed to by Congress on the 4 of July. This is the document which is popularly known as the Declaration of Independence.

June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, on behalf of the Virginia delegation, submitted to the Continental Congress three resolutions, of which the first declared that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. This resolution, which may conveniently be called the Resolution of Independence, was finally voted by the Continental Congress on the 2 of July, 1776. Strictly speaking, this was the official declaration of independence; and if we were a nation of antiquaries we should no doubt find an incongruity in celebrating the anniversary of our independence on the 4 of July.

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.

From the days of Anne Hutchinson, Boston never lacked clubs; and the Caulkers' Club was the prototype of many, rather more secular and political than religious or transcendental, which flourished in the years preceding the Revolution. John Adams, in that Diary which tells us so much that we wish to know, gives us a peep inside one of these clubs, the "Caucus Club,"… "There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, wardens, fire-wards, and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town.