Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.
LORD ACTONThe test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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There are many things the government cant do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.
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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
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The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
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I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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The minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
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Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
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Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.
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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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Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.
LORD ACTON