Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Acton
Stills
Certainty
Power
Absolutes
Still
Absolute
Corrupts
Government
Absolutely
Corrupt
Great
Authority
Tends
Even
Exercise
Tendency
Always
Influence
Tendencies
Men
Almost
Corruption

More quotes by Lord Acton

Image
The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
Lord Acton
Image
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
Image
Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
Lord Acton
Image
The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.
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
Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
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
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
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
Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
Lord Acton
Image
A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
Lord Acton
Image
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
Lord Acton
Image
When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
Lord Acton
Image
It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
Lord Acton
Image
Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
Lord Acton