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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
Contracts
Numbers
Hardens
Democracy
Oligarchy
Expands
Supremacy
Aristocracy
Despotism
Monarchy

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Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
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Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
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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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It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
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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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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
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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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Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
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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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A public man has no right to let his actions be determined by particular interests. He does the same thing as a judge who accepts a bribe. Like a judge he must consider what is right, not what is advantageous to a party or class.
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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.
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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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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
Lord Acton
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The principle of the Inquisition was murderous. . . . The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.
Lord Acton
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
Lord Acton
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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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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
Lord Acton