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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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Lord Acton
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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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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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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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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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
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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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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
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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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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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The mills of God grind slowly.
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