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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
Government
Effectively
Historian
Limitation
Limited
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Essentials
Authority
Legitimacy
Political
Legitimate

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In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food
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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
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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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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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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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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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 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 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 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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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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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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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
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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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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.
Lord Acton