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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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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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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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Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
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The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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Socialism means slavery.
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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
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.
Lord Acton
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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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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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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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.
Lord Acton
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A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
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.
Lord Acton
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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
Lord Acton
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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.
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.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton