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 ACTONThough 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.
More Lord Acton Quotes
-
-
There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty is the prevention of control by others.
LORD ACTON -
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.
LORD ACTON -
Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
LORD ACTON -
Live both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.
LORD ACTON -
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
LORD ACTON -
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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 -
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.
LORD ACTON -
At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.
LORD ACTON -
Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
LORD ACTON -
The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
LORD ACTON -
Great men are almost always bad men.
LORD ACTON -
Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.
LORD ACTON -
If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
LORD ACTON