Lord Acton Quotations

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

The principle of the Inquisition was murderous. . . . The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.

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

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.

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

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

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

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.

The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.

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.

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.

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

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.

The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.

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.

The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The mills of God grind slowly.

Towns were the nursery of freedom.

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

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

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.

Every class is unfit to govern.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.

The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realization of a political ideal; it is the discharge of a moral obligation.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.

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.

The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.

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

When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.

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.

The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.

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

Absolute power demoralizes.

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

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

The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess.

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

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

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

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.

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