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The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Sure
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Always
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Never
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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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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Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.
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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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Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
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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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Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.
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Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
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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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The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
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We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.
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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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Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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Official truth is not actual truth.
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Socialism means slavery.
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And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
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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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A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
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The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.
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