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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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Lord Acton
Oligarchy
Democracy
Expands
Supremacy
Aristocracy
Despotism
Monarchy
Contracts
Hardens
Numbers

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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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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
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A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
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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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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
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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.
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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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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.
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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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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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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
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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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When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.
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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.
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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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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