Top 10 John Emerich Acton Quotes at QuotationFun

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Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.

Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History - 1895.

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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Letter to Mary Gladstone - 24 April 1881; later published in Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone - 1913.

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There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.

Lectures on Modern History - 1895, Lecture XI, The Puritan Revolution, at Project Gutenberg.

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The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.

Lectures on the French Revolution - 1910. Project Gutenberg.

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There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.

Letter to Mary Gladstone, 24 April 1881; later published in Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone - 1913.

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But if we might discuss this point until we found that we nearly agreed, and if we do agree thoroughly about the impropriety of Carlylese denunciations and Pharisaism in history, I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. I f there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III. ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes; you would spare those criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.

Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence - 1907.

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

Letter , 23 January 1861, published in Lord Acton and his Circle - 1906 by Abbot Francis Aidan Gasquet, Letter 24.

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Universal History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Lectures on Modern History - 895, Appendix I. at Project Gutenberg.

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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.

Letter - 23 Jan. 1861.

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Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence - 1907.

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