Quote

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

Lord Acton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Acton
People
Govern
Fit
Easier
Others
Find

More quotes by Lord Acton

Image
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
Lord Acton
Image
Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
Lord Acton
Image
The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.
Lord Acton
Image
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
Lord Acton
Image
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
Lord Acton
Image
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