Lord Acton Quotes

A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.

A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.

For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate. But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power....When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.

Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority...

To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.

History is not only a particular branch of knowledge, but a particular mode and method of knowledge in other branches.

Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.

Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.

Absolute power demoralizes.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

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.

Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.

No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.

Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.

A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.

A public man has no right to let his actions be determined by particular interests. He does the same thing as a judge who accepts a bribe. Like a judge he must consider what is right, not what is advantageous to a party or class.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.

There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.

Every class is unfit to govern.

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.

Socialism means slavery.

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.

Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.

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.

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.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.

It 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.

Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.

I saw in States' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.... Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.

Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.

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.

The mills of God grind slowly.

Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.