Quote

It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.

Lord Acton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Acton
Multiply
Sources
Weakness
Source
Dangerous
Time

More quotes by Lord Acton

Image
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
Lord Acton
Image
The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
Lord Acton
Image
Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
Lord Acton
Image
The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
Lord Acton
Image
Official truth is not actual truth.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
Lord Acton
Image
When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured but Machiavelli reigned.
Lord Acton
Image
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
Lord Acton
Image
Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
Lord Acton
Image
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
Lord Acton