“No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty.”

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Context: No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws.<!--p.2

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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton 112
British politician and historian 1834–1902

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Attributions
Looking up the reference, the book that is cited is not even quoting him. The quote's origins are the book Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. However, the books states that "...Lenin is said to have once observed that..." so clearly the authors are not quoting directly. The quote really just sounds like the kind of thing an anti-communist dreams.

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