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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.

Lord Acton

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More quotes by Lord Acton

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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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 is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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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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Official truth is not actual truth.
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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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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.
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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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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 form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
Lord Acton
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When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured but Machiavelli reigned.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
Lord Acton
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The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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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.
Lord Acton