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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
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If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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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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From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
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Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 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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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
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Fanaticism displays itself in the masses but the masses were rarely fanaticised and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.
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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
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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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Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
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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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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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