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 ACTONLiberty is the prevention of control by others.
More Lord Acton Quotes
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I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
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Great men are almost always bad men.
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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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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power — power sufficient to interfere with property.
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Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.
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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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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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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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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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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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A 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.
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