Quote

To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.

Lord Acton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Acton
Achievement
Conscience
Arms
Perfect
History
Great
Develop

More quotes by Lord Acton

Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
Lord Acton
Image
Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
Lord Acton
Image
Progress, the religion of those who have none.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.
Lord Acton
Image
It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
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
Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
Lord Acton
Image
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
Image
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
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
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
Lord Acton
Image
Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
Lord Acton
Image
Official truth is not actual truth.
Lord Acton
Image
History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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
Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton