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Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
Lord Acton
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Lord Acton
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More quotes by Lord Acton
The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
Lord Acton
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Lord Acton
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.
Lord Acton
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
Lord Acton
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
Lord Acton
A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
Lord Acton
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
Lord Acton
A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
Lord Acton
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
Lord Acton
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
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.
Lord Acton
It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
Lord Acton
Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
Lord Acton
Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
Lord Acton
Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
Lord Acton
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.
Lord Acton
To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
Lord Acton
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
Lord Acton
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.
Lord Acton