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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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Lord Acton
Depends
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Morality

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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 issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
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A public man has no right to let his actions be determined by particular interests. He does the same thing as a judge who accepts a bribe. Like a judge he must consider what is right, not what is advantageous to a party or class.
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Fanaticism displays itself in the masses but the masses were rarely fanaticised and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.
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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.
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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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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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.
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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.
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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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Official truth is not actual truth.
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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
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If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
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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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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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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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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
Lord Acton