A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom
LORD ACTONPiety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.
More Lord Acton Quotes
-
-
The minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
LORD ACTON -
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
LORD ACTON -
I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
LORD ACTON -
We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
LORD ACTON -
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.
LORD ACTON -
Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power — power sufficient to interfere with property.
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 -
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
LORD ACTON -
The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
LORD ACTON -
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play.
LORD ACTON -
Great men are almost always bad 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 -
No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.
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 -
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.
LORD ACTON