Quotes from John Dalberg-Acton

If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes is his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.

Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.

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

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

The greatest men, you can quote for everything.

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.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.

The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.

Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.

There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.

Socialism means slavery.

Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

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

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.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

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.