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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

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Lord Acton
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More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
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I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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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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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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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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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.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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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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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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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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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
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Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.
Lord Acton
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Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
Lord Acton
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Official truth is not actual truth.
Lord Acton
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Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton