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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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Lord Acton
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More quotes by Lord Acton
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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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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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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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
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The mills of God grind slowly.
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
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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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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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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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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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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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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.
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