Acton speaks louder than words.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

* “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

* "Great men are almost always bad men."

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

* “There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”

* “There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.”

* “The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”

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

* "The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future."

* “[History is] not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.”

* “And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

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

* "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern."

* "Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought."

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

* "Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin."

* "Socialism means slavery."

* "At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition."