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History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.

Lord Acton

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Lord Acton
Surveys
Controversy
History
Monarch
Arbiter
Monarchs

More quotes by Lord Acton

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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
Lord Acton
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A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
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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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.
Lord Acton
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
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Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
Lord Acton
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Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
Lord Acton
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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
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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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History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
Lord Acton
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Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
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.
Lord Acton
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Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
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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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.
Lord Acton
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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
Lord Acton
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Progress, the religion of those who have none.
Lord Acton
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The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
Lord Acton
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Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
Lord Acton