John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton Quotes (112 quotes, page 2)

“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.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

"Nationality" (1862)

Idea , Support , Time , Sincerity

“The conflict between liberty under divine authority and the absolutism of human authorities ended disastrously. …In the very year 586 [BCE], in which the flood of Asiatic despotism closed over the city which had been, and was destined again to be, the sanctuary of freedom in the East, a new home was prepared for it in the West, where, guarded by the sea and the mountains, and by valiant hearts, that stately plant was reared under whose shade we dwell, and which is extending its invincible arms so slowly and yet so surely over the civilised world.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

World , Home , Mountain , Freedom

“According to the common opinion indirect elections are a safeguard of conservatism. But all the Assemblies of the French Revolution issued from indirect elections.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

“Legally and to outward seeming the American President is the successor of Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and limited by the Convention of Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs from the Magistrate imagined by the Fathers of the Republic as widely as Monarchy from Democracy…”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Democracy , Imagination , Reality

“Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the tablets of eternity.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

James Anthony Froude, in the lecture "The Science of History" (5 February 1864); published in Representative Essays (1885) by George Haven Putnam, p. 274; Lord Acton quoted Froude in an address "The Study of History" (11 June 1895) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1906acton.html, which led to this being widely attributed to him. The phrase has also sometimes been misquoted as: Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
Misattributed

Law , Change

“In ancient times the State absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Age , Freedom , Suffering , Time

“The idea that religious liberty is the generating principle of civil, and that civil liberty is the necessary condition of religious, was a discovery reserved for the seventeenth century.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)

Idea

“What followed, during many generations, was the cruel domination of class over class, the oppression of the poor by the rich, and of the ignorant by the wise. The spirit of that domination found passionate utterance in the verses of the aristocratic poet Theognis,… who longed to drink the blood of his political adversaries. From these oppressors the people of many cities sought deliverance in the less intolerable tyranny of revolutionary usurpers. The remedy gave new shape and energy to the evil. …rights secured by equal laws and by sharing power existed nowhere.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

People , Law , Drink , Passion

“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 realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)

Faith , Law

“Six hundred years before the birth of Christ absolutism held unbounded sway. Throughout the East it was propped by the unchanging influence of priests and armies. In the West, where there were no sacred books requiring trained interpreters, the priesthood acquired no preponderance, and when the kings were overthrown their powers passed to aristocracies of birth.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Books , Birth , Christ , Training

“History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

As quoted in Essays on Freedom and Power, Introduction, p. xlvii (1949) https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Essays%20on%20Freedom%20and%20Power_3.pdf

Men , History

“The great question is, to discover not what governments prescribe, but what they ought to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the conscience of mankind.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Question

“The sentiment on which [papal] infallibility was founded could not be reached by argument, the weapon of human reason, but resided in conclusions transcending evidence, and was the inaccessible postulate rather than a demonstrable consequence of a system of religious faith.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

"The Vatican Council," http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3011302;view=1up;seq=187 The North British Review (1870)

Faith

“The government of the Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political authority, but by the unity of… faith and founded not on physical force but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community that it was resisted by Samuel… The throne was erected on a compact; and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people that recognised no lawgiver but God, whose highest aim in politics was to… make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws, which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed… to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted consciences of the masses. Thus the… Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development… and the principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man. The operation of these principles… occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Source: The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Men , God , People , Family

“The immediate purpose with which the Italians and Germans effected the great change in European constitution was unity, not liberty. They constructed, not securities, but forces. Machiavelli's hour had come.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Introductory note to G.P. Gooch's Annals of Politics and Culture https://archive.org/stream/annalsofpolitics00goociala#page/n5/mode/2up, p. xxxlv (1901)

Change

“A century ago it was perfectly well known that whoever had one audience of a Master in Chancery was made to pay for three, but no man heeded the enormity until it suggested to a young lawyer that it might be well to question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part of a system in which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the clear hard mind of Jeremy Bentham is memorable in the political calendar beyond the entire administration of many statesmen.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Question , Light , Parting

“Their [Athenians] history furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. For the Athenians were not only brave and patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most religious of the Greeks. They venerated the constitution which had given them prosperity and equality and the pride of freedom…They tolerated considerable variety of opinion, and great license of speech…Thus they became the only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions. But the possession of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding of monarchs exercised its demoralizing influence on the illustrious Democracy of Athens.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

People , Exercises , Democracy , History

“The Stoics could only advise the wise man to hold aloof from politics, keeping the unwritten law in his heart. But when Christ said: "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's," those words, spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of freedom.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Death , God , Law , Freedom

“Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Letter (4 November 1866) http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/acton-lee.html to Robert E. Lee

World , Hope , Exercises , Democracy

“It would be easy to point out a paragraph in St. Augustine, or a sentence of Grotius that outweighs in influence the Acts of fifty Parliaments, and our cause owes more to Cicero and Seneca, to Vinet and Tocqueville, than to the laws of Lycurgus or the Five Codes of France.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Law

“A State which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself; a State which labours to neutralise, to absorb, or to expel them, destroys its own vitality; a State which does not include them is destitute of the chief basis of self-government. The theory of nationality, therefore, is a retrograde step in history.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

"Nationality" (1862)

History

“Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

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

Secret , Justice

“It is they [men of science] who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which, as the earthly wants and the passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark of history.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The Study of History (1895)

Men , Truth , Secret , Error

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

As quoted in Maxed Out : Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders (2007) by James D. Scurlock; The quote does not appear in any of Acton's published writings. Ezra Pound attributes the exact quotation to Sir Alexander James Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice of England in Pound, Ezra. "'Ezra Pound Speaking': Radio Speeches of World War II", ed. Leonard W. Doob (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978), 219. https://archive.org/stream/EzraPoundSpeaking-RadioSpeechesOfWorldWarIi/EzraPoundSpeaking#page/n116/mode/1up/search/Lord+Chief+Justice
Misattributed

People

“But it may be urged, on the other side, that Liberty is not the sum or substitute for of all things men ought to live for... to be real it must be circumscribed... advancing civilisation invests the state with increased rights and duties, and imposes increased burdens and constraints on the subject... a highly instructed and intelligent community may perceive the benefit of compulsory obligations which, at a lower stage, would be thought unbearable... liberal progress is not vague or indefinite, but aims at a point where the public is subject to no restrictions but those of which it feels the advantage... a free country may be less capable of doing much for the advancement of religion, the prevention of vice, or the relief of suffering, than one that does not shrink from confronting great emergencies by some sacrifice of individual rights, and some concentration of power... the supreme political object ought to be sometimes postponed to still higher moral objects. My argument involves no collision with these qualifying reflections. We are dealing, not with the effects of freedom, but with its causes. ...influences which brought arbitrary government under control, either by the diffusion of power, or to an appeal to an authority which transcends all government, and among these influences the greatest philosophers of Greece have no claim to be reckoned.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Religion , Country , Freedom , Intelligence

“In ancient times the State absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Liberty, by this definition, is the essential condition and guardian of religion...”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Religion , Time , Country , Freedom

“A government which cannot be reformed does not merit to be preserved.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 74
Undated

“Democracy is government of the strongest, just as military despotism is. This is a bond of connection between the two. They are the brutal forms of government and as strength and authority go together, necessarily arbitrarily.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 72
Undated

Democracy

“The strongest of all the obstacles to progress, the reign of the dead.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 60, n. 1
Undated

Dead

“Property, not Conscience, is the basis of liberty. For the defence of Conscience need not arise. Property is always exposed to State interference. It is the constant object of policy.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private notes, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 19, n. 7
Undated

“If it can be shown that the majority of women will probably be Liberal, or that they will divide equally, I should say that the balance is, very slightly, in favour of giving them votes.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (26 April 1891), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 235

Women

“The yeoman farmers of the United States have always been the strength of the republic.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The North British Review (April 1870), p. 268, quoted in G. E. Fasnacht, Acton's Political Philosophy. An Analysis (1952), p. 217

“The English constitution was excellent until removed by foreign writers into the domain of theory, when in direct contradiction with its nature and origin it came to be admired as a common representative government.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private journal (1858), quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 70

Nature

“We must not pursue science for ends independent of science. It must be pursued for its own sake, and must lead to its own results.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Private journal (1858), quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 40

Science

“The lesson of modern history—that Religions enjoy (are endowed with) the prerogative of perpetual youth while philosophies seldom outlast a generation.”

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. 195
Undated

Religion , Youth , History

“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