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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Compensation
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Suffering
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History

More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.
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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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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
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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.
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The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
Lord Acton
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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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The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
Lord Acton
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Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Lord Acton
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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.
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A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.
Lord Acton
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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
Lord Acton