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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.

Lord Acton

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More quotes by Lord Acton

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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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 State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.
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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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The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
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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.
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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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.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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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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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
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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.
Lord Acton
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
Lord Acton
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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
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
Lord Acton
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton