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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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Lord Acton
Stationery
Speech
Silence
Others
Better
Many
Things

More quotes by Lord Acton

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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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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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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
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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.
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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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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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
Lord Acton
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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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Socialism means slavery.
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
Lord Acton
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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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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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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Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
Lord Acton