Quote

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.

Lord Acton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Acton
Disputes
Documents
Opinions
Stand
Opinion
History
Must
Evasion
Dispute

More quotes by Lord Acton

Image
The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
Lord Acton
Image
When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
Lord Acton
Image
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
Lord Acton
Image
History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
Lord Acton
Image
From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
Lord Acton
Image
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton