Words matter. These are the best John Dalberg-Acton Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The greatest men, you can quote for everything.
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
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.
Socialism means slavery.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
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 issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.
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 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.
To be able to look back upon one’s past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
By a series of violent shocks, the nations in succession have struggled to shake off the Past, to reverse the action of Time and the verdict of success, and to rescue the world from the reign of the dead.
Learn as much by writing as by reading.
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.
Liberty is the prevention of control by others.
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.
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.
Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
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.
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.
