A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
LORD ACTONProgress, the religion of those who have none.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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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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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
LORD ACTON -
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
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Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority…
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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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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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The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.
LORD ACTON -
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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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free.
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No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.
LORD ACTON -
I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
LORD ACTON -
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 is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
LORD ACTON