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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
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More quotes by Lord Acton

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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
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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.
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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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Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.
Lord Acton
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Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
Lord Acton
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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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Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
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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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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