Great men are almost always bad men.
LORD ACTONLiberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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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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The principle of the Inquisition was murderous. . . . The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
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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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Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.
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Every class is unfit to govern.
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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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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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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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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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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
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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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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
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The 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.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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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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The minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
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Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.
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The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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