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 ACTONInk was not invented to express our real feelings.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority…
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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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.
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But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power….
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.
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. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free.
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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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Live both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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