Great men are almost always bad men.
LORD ACTONLiberty is the prevention of control by others.
More Lord Acton Quotes
-
-
There are many things the government cant do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.
LORD ACTON -
There should be a law to the People besides its own will.
LORD ACTON -
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
LORD ACTON -
The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
LORD ACTON -
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
LORD ACTON -
Learn as much by writing as by reading.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
LORD ACTON -
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.
LORD ACTON -
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
LORD ACTON -
Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race
LORD ACTON -
Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
LORD ACTON -
The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.
LORD ACTON -
The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
LORD ACTON -
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
LORD ACTON