Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word.
LORD ACTONLiberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
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Liberty is the prevention of control by others.
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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.
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There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.
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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food.
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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
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I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.
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Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.
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From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
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A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race
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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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The principle of the Inquisition was murderous. . . . The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.
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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
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Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.
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If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
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Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
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A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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