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
The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime...
Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
Liberty is the prevention of control by others.
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.
Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.
Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
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.