Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
LORD ACTONLimitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.
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Socialism means slavery.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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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.
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Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
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But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power….
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Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.
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From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
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Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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Learn as much by writing as by reading.
LORD ACTON






