Quote

Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.

Lord Acton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lord Acton
Rules
Present
Literature
Future
Government

More quotes by Lord Acton

Image
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
Image
The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
Lord Acton
Image
Progress, the religion of those who have none.
Lord Acton
Image
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
Lord Acton
Image
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.
Lord Acton
Image
We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
Lord Acton
Image
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
Lord Acton
Image
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Lord Acton
Image
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
Image
There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.
Lord Acton
Image
I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
Lord Acton
Image
Official truth is not actual truth.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
Lord Acton
Image
Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
Lord Acton
Image
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.
Lord Acton
Image
Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
Lord Acton