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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Limitation
Limited
Essential
Essentials
Authority
Legitimacy
Political
Legitimate
Government
Effectively
Historian

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The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.
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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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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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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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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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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.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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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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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
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Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
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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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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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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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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.
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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
Lord Acton