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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
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More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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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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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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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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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.
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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.
Lord Acton
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It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
Lord Acton
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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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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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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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
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.
Lord Acton
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
Lord Acton
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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
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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.
Lord Acton
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton