I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong.
LORD ACTONThe passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.
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The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.
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Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
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Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern … Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
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False principles, which correspond with the bad as well as with the just aspirations of mankind, are a normal and necessary element in the social life of nations.
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Every class is unfit to govern.
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Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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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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The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
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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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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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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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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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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power — power sufficient to interfere with property.
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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Learn as much by writing as by reading.
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A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
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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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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power….
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