Lord Acton
Books by Lord Acton
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Dollinger on the Temporal Power
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Quotes by Lord Acton
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Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word.
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No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.
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The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of the security enjoyed by minorities.
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History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
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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.
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Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
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Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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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.
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Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion.
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The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
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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.
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Power tends to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
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Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.
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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.
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