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.
LORD ACTONLive both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.
More Lord Acton Quotes
-
-
Every class is unfit to govern.
LORD ACTON -
From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
LORD ACTON -
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
LORD ACTON -
Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
LORD ACTON -
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
LORD ACTON -
A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
LORD ACTON -
Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
LORD ACTON -
The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
LORD ACTON -
It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.
LORD ACTON -
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 ACTON -
The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded.
LORD ACTON -
The mills of God grind slowly.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end…liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition…
LORD ACTON -
But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power….
LORD ACTON