Best 132 quotes of Lord Acton on MyQuotes

Lord Acton

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    Fanaticism displays itself in the masses; but the masses were rarely fanaticised; and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    Great men are almost always bad men.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

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

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.

  • By Anonym
    Lord Acton

    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.