If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
LORD ACTONBe generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
More Lord Acton Quotes
-
-
Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.
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 -
Great men are almost always bad men.
LORD ACTON -
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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 -
The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.
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 -
There are many things the government cant do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.
LORD ACTON -
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
LORD ACTON -
The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.
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 -
Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.
LORD ACTON -
Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.
LORD ACTON -
Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
LORD ACTON -
Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.
LORD ACTON -
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
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 -
Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word.
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 -
When 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.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty is the prevention of control by others.
LORD ACTON -
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.
LORD ACTON -
The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
LORD ACTON -
Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
LORD ACTON