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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Harmony
Liberty
Law

More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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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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A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
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Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
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In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
Lord Acton
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
Lord Acton
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
Lord Acton
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Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
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The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
Lord Acton
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The mills of God grind slowly.
Lord Acton
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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
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Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
Lord Acton
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Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
Lord Acton
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It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
Lord Acton
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.
Lord Acton
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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
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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
Lord Acton