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“The early history of the world is the history of a few great men. Their Wirkungskreis is immense—vaster than that of God himself.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 194
Undated

World , God , History , Men

“The only resistance ever made to Louis XIV was from religion.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 194
Undated

Religion

“Religious liberty came not from the Reformation or from the sects as a whole but from particular sects...especially those which the Reformation sought to exterminate.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 194
Undated

“What one hears in Ranke. The whisper of statecraft. Not the tramp of democracy's earthquake feet. Not the dull roar of surging opinion.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 192
Undated

Democracy

“Liberalism is really opposed to liberty. ... Modern liberalism in England as well as abroad, in America as well as in Europe, has done more to destroy liberty than monarchy has done.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 186
Undated

“[I]t will not do to act as if the moral question was not the supreme question in public life, and, in a sense, the vera causa of party conflict.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (21 November 1891), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 257
1890s

Sense , Life , Question

“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.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Letter (23 January 1861), published in Lord Acton and his Circle (1906) by Abbot Francis Aidan Gasquet, Letter 74
1860s

“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.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

1880s, Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)

Faith , Law

“Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor; and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

1870s, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Family , God , Children , Universe

“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.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Opening statement.
1870s, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Motivation , Religion , Men

“A time came when the Catholics, having long relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had been defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously explained away. The same motive which had justified the murder now prompted the lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and restorers of their Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and that so much infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to say that the most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at Rome, lest they should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A swarm of facts were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were insignificant in number; they were slain for no reason connected with religion; the Pope believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a reality; the medal is fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted with the Protestants themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard that it was over. These things were repeated so often that they have been sometimes believed; and men have fallen into this way of speaking whose sincerity was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in their religion by the errors or the vices of Popes. Möhler was pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures on the history of the Church, which were published only last year, he said that the Catholics, as such, took no part in the massacre; that no cardinal, bishop, or priest shared in the councils that prepared it; that Charles informed the Pope that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that Gregory made his thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved. Such things will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Source: 1860s, The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869)

Sincerity , Life , Men , Truth

“The worst criminals were not the men who did the deed. The crime of mobs and courtiers, infuriated by the lust of vengeance and of power, is not so strange a portent as the exultation of peaceful men, influenced by no present injury or momentary rage, but by the permanent and incurable perversion of moral sense wrought by a distorted piety.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Source: 1860s, The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869)

Sense , Rage , Peace , Men