Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
LORD ACTON
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.
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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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When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.
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Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
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A public man has no right to let his actions be determined by particular interests. He does the same thing as a judge who accepts a bribe. Like a judge he must consider what is right, not what is advantageous to a party or class.
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.
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The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.
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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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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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Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
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Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.
LORD ACTON