158 Quotes by Lord Acton

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

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 barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States.

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

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

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.

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

Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.