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By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

Lord Acton

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More quotes by Lord Acton

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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.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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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.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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.
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The mills of God grind slowly.
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Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
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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.
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The principle of the Inquisition was murderous. . . . The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.
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If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
Lord Acton
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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Socialism means slavery.
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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
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
Lord Acton