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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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Lord Acton
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More quotes by Lord Acton

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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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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
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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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Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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.
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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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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
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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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 true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
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By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
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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