Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.
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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If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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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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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.
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Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority…
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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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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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Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.
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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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The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.
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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.
LORD ACTON