The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
LORD ACTONIn 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.
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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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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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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Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.
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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 have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.
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A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
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But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power….
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end…liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition…
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.
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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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Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern … Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
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A convinced man differs from a prejudiced man as an honest man from a liar.
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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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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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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power — power sufficient to interfere with property.
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Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.
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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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Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
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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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Official truth is not actual truth.
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