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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Opinion
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Manners
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Opinions
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Eternity

More quotes by Lord Acton

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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
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If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.
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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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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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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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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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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 form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
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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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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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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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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
Lord Acton