John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton: Liberty

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton was British politician and historian. Explore interesting quotes on liberty.
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton: 224 quotes2 likes

“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

“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

“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)

“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)