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The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
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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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The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
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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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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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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
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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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The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.
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Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
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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.
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Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.
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The mills of God grind slowly.
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It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
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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.
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The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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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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