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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Disregard
Vice
Vices
Morality
Democracy
Common

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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.
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The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
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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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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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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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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
Lord Acton
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.
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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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