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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.

Lord Acton

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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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Official truth is not actual truth.
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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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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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
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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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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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Fanaticism displays itself in the masses but the masses were rarely fanaticised and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.
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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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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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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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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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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
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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.
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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.
Lord Acton