Lord Acton · Skopia

Quotes

4

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

1887

★ 6.9

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The History of Freedom in Antiquity · 1877

★ 1.9

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The results would be an Encyclopedia of Error.

1881

★ 1.9

Historical literature

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

1907

★ 1.8