Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.
LORD ACTONSocialism means slavery.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.
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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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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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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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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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A public man has no right to let his actions be determined by particular interests. He does the same thing as a judge who accepts a bribe. Like a judge he must consider what is right, not what is advantageous to a party or class.
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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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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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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
LORD ACTON