Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
LORD ACTONSocialism means slavery.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.
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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.
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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
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Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
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Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.
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The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
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The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.
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There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
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A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.
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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
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If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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