Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.
LORD ACTONAt 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.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.
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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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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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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
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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.
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In every age its 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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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
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No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.
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Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
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Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word.
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Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority…
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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.
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Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.
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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
LORD ACTON