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Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.

Lord Acton

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More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.
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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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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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Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
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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, 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.
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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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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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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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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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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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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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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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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From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
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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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Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
Lord Acton