Power corrupts

John Emerich Edward Acton, Lord Acton, 1834 – 1902, was a writer, publisher, and political philosopher.
He is mostly known for his statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Many other things he originally said ring just as true and eternal.

Quotes

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

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities….

Every institution tends to fail by an excess of its own basic principle.

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

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
Lord Acton, Letter to Mary Gladstone, 1881

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently, men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.
Machiavelli’s teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
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 danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
The long term, versus the short term, argument is one used by losers.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
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.
To be able to look back upon one’s past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.
Praise is the shipwreck of historians.
Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.
The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realization of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.
Be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not over look the strength of the bad cause or the weakness of the good.
Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty – but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That’s where life is; that’s where all the good stuff is.
Guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing.
Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion.
If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
History to be above evasion must stand on documents not on opinion.