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
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.
Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime...
There should be a law to the People besides its own will.
Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.
I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
Learn as much by writing as by reading.
Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.
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.
Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.