Lord Acton Quotes
-
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.
→ -
A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
→ -
Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
→ -
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.
→ -
Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.
→ -
The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
→ -
Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
→ -
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
→ -
Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
→ -
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
→ -
Socialism means slavery.
→ -
The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.
→ -
There should be a law to the People besides its own will.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
Remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.
→ -
Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
→ -
No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.
→ -
Absolute power demoralizes.
→ -
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.
→ -
Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.
→ -
There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.
→ -
It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
→ -
The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→
Related Authors
-
Gertrude Himmelfarb Historian -
John Henry Newman Priest -
Harold Acton Writer -
Edmund Burke Statesman -
Thucydides Historian -
William E. Gladstone Former Chancellor of the Exchequer -
John Stuart Mill Philosopher -
Baron de Montesquieu Author -
Friedrich August von Hayek Economist -
George Orwell Novelist -
Hannah Arendt Philosopher -
Thomas B. Macaulay Former Secretary at War -
John Locke Philosopher -
Robert Sirico Priest -
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham British statesman -
Chief Powhatan Paramount chief -
Mandell Creighton Author -
Ludwig von Mises Philosopher -
Alexis de Tocqueville Historian