There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
LORD ACTONIf some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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A convinced man differs from a prejudiced man as an honest man from a liar.
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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
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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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Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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Socialism means slavery.
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There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
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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.
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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
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For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
LORD ACTON