The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
Lord ActonThe 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.
Lord ActonMachiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Lord ActonHistory is not only a particular branch of knowledge, but a particular mode and method of knowledge in other branches.
Lord ActonThat great political idea, sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God, teaching men to treasure the liberties of others as their own and to defend them for the love of justice and charity more than as a claim of right, has been the soul of what is great and good in the progress of the last two hundred years.
Lord ActonIt is they [men of science] who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark in history.
Lord Acton