Lord Acton Quotes

Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.

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.

Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.

If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.

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.

A history that should pursue all the subtle threads from end to end might be eminently valuable, but not as a tribute to peace and conciliation.

Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.

Official truth is not actual truth.

The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned,-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.

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.

Great men are almost always bad men.

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.

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

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.

Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word.

The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.

Live both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

Good and evil lie close together. Seek no artistic unity in character.

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.

Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.

In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.

A convinced man differs from a prejudiced man as an honest man from a liar.

Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.

The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.

There should be a law to the People besides its own will.

In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food

The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.

It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.

Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.

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.

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.

Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.

Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.

The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.

Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.

There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.

The history of institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away.