English historian, politician & writer (1834-1902)
The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
But don't you see, pervading the letter and guiding the pen, the great intellectual and moral defect of the present day? I mean, the habit of dwelling on appearances, not on realities, of preferring the report to the bullet, and the echo to the report.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880
Popularity is best estimated by its quality and character; it is far better to conquer than to court it; to be indifferent to it than to be concerned about it.
LORD ACTON
Acton; Or, The Circle of Life
When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of something subtler or more interesting beyond.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880
I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
The generation you consult will be more democratic and better instructed than our own; for the progress of democracy, though not constant, is certain, and the progress of knowledge is both constant and certain.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, December 14, 1880
Nearly everybody yields up his conscience, his practical judgment, into the keeping of others.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880
Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition.
LORD ACTON
"Nationality", Home and Foreign Review, Jul. 1862
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, Apr. 24, 1881
Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, March 15, 1880
Do not turn yourself from an end into a means -- one does not justify the other.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, October 3, 1880
When savage nations are first visited by the civilized, they evince the greatest eagerness to obtain iron, as soon as they have come to know the uses of it, while the Christians who go amongst them, manifest a still greater desire for the possession of gold. To accomplish these mutual ends, the savages resort to cunning, pilfering, and bartering, and their more enlightened brethren to deception, violence, and fraud.
LORD ACTON
Acton; Or, the Circle of Life
Fanaticism displays itself in the masses; but the masses were rarely fanaticised; and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
The history of institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
We know that the doctrine of equality leads by steps not only logical, but almost mechanical, to sacrifice the principle of liberty to the principle of quantity; that, being unable to abdicate responsibility and power, it attacks genuine representation, and, as there is no limit where there is no control, invades, sooner or later, both property and religion.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, December 14, 1880
The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.
LORD ACTON
The Study of History