Top 120 Lord Acton Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.”

— Lord Acton

52. “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.”

— Lord Acton

53. “Progress, the religion of those who have none.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

55. “Absolute power demoralizes.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

58. “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

60. “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.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

62. “Advice to Persons About to Write History – Don’t.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

65. “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.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

68. “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.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

70. “Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.”

— Lord Acton

71. “History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.”

— Lord Acton

72. “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.”

— Lord Acton

73. “In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

75. “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.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

78. “The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.”

— Lord Acton

79. “When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.”

— Lord Acton

80. “Socialism means slavery.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

82. “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.”

— Lord Acton

83. “The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

86. “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.”

— Lord Acton

87. “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.”

— Lord Acton

88. “There should be a law to the People besides its own will.”

— Lord Acton

89. “Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton

97. “There are many things the government cant do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people.”

— Lord Acton

98. “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.”

— Lord Acton

99. “Towns were the nursery of freedom.”

— Lord Acton

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

— Lord Acton