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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
Socialism
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Despotism
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More quotes by Lord Acton
Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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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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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.
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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
Lord Acton
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
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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 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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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 test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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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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Official truth is not actual truth.
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Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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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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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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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