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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
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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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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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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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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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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A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
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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.
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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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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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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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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It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
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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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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, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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