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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.

Lord Acton

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More quotes by 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.
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Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
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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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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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.
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At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.
Lord Acton
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Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
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.
Lord Acton
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The mills of God grind slowly.
Lord Acton
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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.
Lord Acton
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Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
Lord Acton
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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
Lord Acton
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Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Lord Acton
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The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
Lord Acton
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I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
Lord Acton
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Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
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 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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Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.
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