Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
LORD ACTONWhen the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
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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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If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
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Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
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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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In every age its (liberty’s) 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 bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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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.
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Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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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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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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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
LORD ACTON