Lord Acton quotes:

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

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

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.

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.

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

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

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.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.

Absolute power demoralizes.

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

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

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

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

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.

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

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.

Socialism means slavery.

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

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

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.

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

Great men are almost always bad men.

The mills of God grind slowly.

There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience -- a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.

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.

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned,-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

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

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

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

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

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.

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

The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.

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

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

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.

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

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

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

A history that should pursue all the subtle threads from end to end might be eminently valuable, but not as a tribute to peace and conciliation.

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

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

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

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.

Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.

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

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

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.

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

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

Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.

Every class is unfit to govern.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.

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

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

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

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

I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.

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

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.

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

Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.

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

It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.

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.

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.

It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State -- ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios -- burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man ... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control.

Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience.

Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.

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.

Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.

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

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.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.

Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others.

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its 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.

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

Live both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.

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

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

Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.

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

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

Official truth is not actual truth.

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

Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.

Progress, the religion of those who have none.

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

Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.

Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.