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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
Spiritual
Live
Without
Many
Policemen
Men
Motives
Motive
Straight
Kept

More quotes by Lord Acton

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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.
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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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I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
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Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
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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
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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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Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
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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
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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.
Lord Acton
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If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
Lord Acton
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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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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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And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
Lord Acton
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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
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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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The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
Lord Acton
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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
Lord Acton
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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
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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.
Lord Acton