To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
LORD ACTONA 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.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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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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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…
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If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
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Every class is unfit to govern.
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In every age its (liberty’s) 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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I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.
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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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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
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The mills of God grind slowly.
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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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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
LORD ACTON