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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Despotic
Accompanied
Corruption
Morality
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Always

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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.
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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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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.
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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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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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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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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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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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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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The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
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The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.
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Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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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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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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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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