Lord Acton Quotes

The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.

Guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing

There are many things the government cant do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.

Government by idea tends to take in everything, to make the whole of society obedient to the idea. Spaces not so governed are unconquered, beyond the border, unconverted, a future danger.

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom

We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realization the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition.

Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

That 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.

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

Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.

Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.

Progress, the religion of those who have none.

The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.

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.

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth.

It is very easy to speak words of wisdom from a comfortable distance, when one sees no reality, no details, none of the effect on men's minds.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others.

False principles, which correspond with the bad as well as with the just aspirations of mankind, are a normal and necessary element in the social life of nations.

There is no evidence to support the belief that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ever questioned Americas power. He questioned only the President's John F. Kennedys readiness to use it. Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (1966) Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.

Towns were the nursery of freedom.

Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.