History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
LORD ACTONThe 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.
More Lord Acton Quotes
-
-
We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
LORD ACTON -
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race
LORD ACTON -
The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.
LORD ACTON -
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
LORD ACTON -
The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.
LORD ACTON -
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.
LORD ACTON -
The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
LORD ACTON -
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.
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.
LORD ACTON -
There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.
LORD ACTON -
Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.
LORD ACTON -
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.
LORD ACTON -
A convinced man differs from a prejudiced man as an honest man from a liar.
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.
LORD ACTON