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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
Essential
Essentials
Authority
Legitimacy
Political
Legitimate
Government
Effectively
Historian
Limitation
Limited

More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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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 test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
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The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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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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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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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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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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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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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
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Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
Lord Acton