Top 120 Lord Acton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Short Quotes, Hard Hitting Quotes, Short Deep Quotes, Government Quotes, Corruption Quotes

2. “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.”

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Exercise Quotes, Government Quotes, Corruption Quotes

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

5. “The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

7. “Great men are almost always bad men.”

— Lord Acton

8. “The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.”

— Lord Acton

9. “Liberty is the prevention of control by others.”

— Lord Acton

10. “Learn as much by writing as by reading.”

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Lord Acton

12. “The mills of God grind slowly.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

15. “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Country Quotes

18. “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.”

— Lord Acton

19. “Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.”

— Lord Acton

20. “Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

23. “A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom.”

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

24. “Judge talent at its best and character at its worst.”

— Lord Acton

25. “Every class is unfit to govern.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

28. “I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Strong Quotes

30. “Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.”

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Real Quotes

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

— Lord Acton

32. “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.”

— Lord Acton

33. “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.”

— Lord Acton

34. “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.”

— Lord Acton

35. “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.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

39. “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.”

— Lord Acton

40. “The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

43. “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.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

Featured in: Country Quotes

45. “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.”

— Lord Acton

46. “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.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton