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
Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.
Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
History is not only a particular branch of knowledge, but a particular mode and method of knowledge in other branches.
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.
To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
False principles, which correspond with the bad as well as with the just aspirations of mankind, are a normal and necessary element in the social life of nations.
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.