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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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Liberty

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A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
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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.
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Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
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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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Socialism means slavery.
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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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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
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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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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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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.
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The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
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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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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
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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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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.
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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 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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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton