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
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
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
The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.
Lord Acton
Image
Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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
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
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
Lord Acton
Image
The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
Lord Acton
Image
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Lord Acton
Image
Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
Lord Acton
Image
Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
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
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
And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
Lord Acton
Image
Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
Lord Acton
Image
Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
Lord Acton
Image
Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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