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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Easily
Accepts
Property
Despotism
Accepting
Interfere
Power
Execution
Strongest
Socialism
Sufficient
Requires

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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 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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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 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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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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Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
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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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A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
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And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
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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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If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
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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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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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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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Official truth is not actual truth.
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