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
Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power...power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.
A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
Official truth is not actual truth.
A convinced man differs from a prejudiced man as an honest man from a liar.
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
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.
Progress, the religion of those who have none.
A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.
Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.