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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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Lord Acton
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More quotes by 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.
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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.
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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
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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.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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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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Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
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History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
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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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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
Lord Acton
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The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
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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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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 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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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
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Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
Lord Acton
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Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
Lord Acton
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Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
Lord Acton
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
Lord Acton
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Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
Lord Acton