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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
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More quotes by Lord Acton

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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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 issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
Lord Acton
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Official truth is not actual 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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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
Lord Acton
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And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
Lord Acton
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The mills of God grind slowly.
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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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
Lord Acton
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
Lord Acton
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There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.
Lord Acton
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Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.
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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Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
Lord Acton