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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Morality
Power
Always
Despotic
Accompanied
Corruption

More quotes by Lord Acton

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The mills of God grind slowly.
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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
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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.
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
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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.
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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.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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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.
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Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
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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 strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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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 few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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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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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
Lord Acton