Lord Acton
Lord Acton
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO DL—known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet from 1837 to 1869 and usually referred to simply as Lord Acton—was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet. He is perhaps best known for the remark, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth10 January 1834
Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.
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.
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.
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.
Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.
It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
Every class is unfit to govern.
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.
The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
Towns were the nursery of freedom.
The mills of God grind slowly.
A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.