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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Illumination
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More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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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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From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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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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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
Lord Acton
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
Lord Acton
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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.
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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Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
Lord Acton
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The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
Lord Acton
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
Lord Acton
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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