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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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Lord Acton
Without
Many
Policemen
Men
Motives
Motive
Straight
Kept
Spiritual
Live

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The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.
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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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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
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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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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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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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Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.
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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
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The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
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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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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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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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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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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Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
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There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.
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