Quote

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.

Lord Acton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Acton
Liberty
Common
Religion
Next
Pretext
Good
Motive
Deeds
Crime

More quotes by 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
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
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
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.
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
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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
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
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
History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
Lord Acton
Image
The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
Lord Acton
Image
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
Image
When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured but Machiavelli reigned.
Lord Acton
Image
I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
Lord Acton
Image
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
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
There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.
Lord Acton
Image
Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
Lord Acton