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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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More quotes by Lord Acton
Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
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The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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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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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.
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Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
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The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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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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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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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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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.
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The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
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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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