Top 100 Acton's Quotes
#1. We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
Robert Caro
#2. I found bossing other people about such a delightful novelty that I had to remind myself of Lord Acton's famous axiom about its tendency to corrupt.
Victoria Clayton
#3. It is an almost precise inversion of Lord Acton's observation: the more power we have over our children, the more we are willing to sacrifice for them. Love transfigures power. Absolute love transfigures absolute power. And power transfigured by love is the power that made and saves the world.
Andy Crouch
#4. Government by idea tends to take in everything, to make the whole of society obedient to the idea. Spaces not so governed are unconquered, beyond the border, unconverted, a future danger.
Lord Acton
#5. False principles, which correspond with the bad as well as with the just aspirations of mankind, are a normal and necessary element in the social life of nations.
Lord Acton
#6. It is very easy to speak words of wisdom from a comfortable distance, when one sees no reality, no details, none of the effect on men's minds.
Lord Acton
#7. When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.
Lord Acton
#8. Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power
power sufficient to interfere with property.
Lord Acton
#9. The greatest men, you can quote for everything.
John Acton
#10. Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
Lord Acton
#11. I myself saw Yahoo become a $100 billion company and then become a $10 billion company, so you always have to look at valuations with a grain of salt and understand it is a point-in-time measure.
Brian Acton
#12. Fanaticism displays itself in the masses; but the masses were rarely fanaticised; and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.
Lord Acton
#14. When I joined 'WhatsApp,' I was 38 years old. Opportunity is available to us in all walks of life and at all ages.
Brian Acton
#15. The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
John Acton
#16. In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.
Lord Acton
#17. My mom started an air-freight company; my grandmother built a golf course. I have a certain degree of entrepreneurial risk-taking in my family history. Maybe that eventually rubbed off on me a little bit.
Brian Acton
#19. A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom
Lord Acton
#20. When I worked at Yahoo, I saw a lot of acquisitions. Some succeeded, and some failed. I think I have learned from that.
Brian Acton
#21. Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned,-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.
Lord Acton
#22. The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.
Lord Acton
#23. Towns were the nursery of freedom.
Lord Acton
#24. Dealing with ads is depressing. You don't make anyone's life better by making advertisements work better.
Brian Acton
#25. Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things.
Lord Acton
#26. To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
Lord Acton
#27. It's not 100 per cent clear to me what's working about Snapchat.
Brian Acton
#28. Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.
Lord Acton
#29. Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Lord Acton
#30. Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life's next adventure.
Brian Acton
#31. Yes, I was a big math and computer geek, that's true. I was driven by the scholastic side of things. For me, it was all about what I could do with math and computers.
Brian Acton
#32. In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food
Lord Acton
#33. It may be safely averred that good cookery is the best and truest economy, turning to full account every wholesome article of food, and converting into palatable meals what the ignorant either render uneatable or throw away in disdain.
Eliza Acton
#34. The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.
Lord Acton
#35. The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind, and is always sure of finding new and unforseen allies in continuing its martyrology.
Lord Acton
#36. I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.
Lord Acton
#37. Building secure products actually makes for a safer world; many people in law enforcement may not agree with that.
Brian Acton
#39. Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
#40. Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
Lord Acton
#41. Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.
Lord Acton
#42. In early 2010, we launched our first localized version of 'WhatsApp' for iPhone. It included Spanish and German language translations, to name a couple.
Brian Acton
#43. The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
Lord Acton
#44. Horace Greeley pursues temperance to extravagance." Lord Acton
Harold Holzer
#45. The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.
Lord Acton
#47. A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.
Lord Acton
#48. Official truth is not actual truth.
Lord Acton
#49. The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
Lord Acton
#50. FreeBSD has a nicely tuned network stack and extremely good reliability.
Brian Acton
#51. The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.
Lord Acton
#52. For me specifically, it was important to graduate. In my family, I was one of the first graduates. My mom did not have a college degree. My dad did not have a college degree.
Brian Acton
#53. The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.
Lord Acton
#55. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Lord Acton
#56. The only thing I've experienced that could compare to the launch in terms of raw power was the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Loren Acton
#57. Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.
Lord Acton
#58. You have a certain identity that you present to the world on Facebook, and you have a certain identity that you present with the telephone, and they are different.
Brian Acton
#59. Learn as much by writing as by reading.
-Lord Acton
N.a.
#60. Progress, the religion of those who have none.
Lord Acton
#61. Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word.
Lord Acton
#63. A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.
Lord Acton
#64. The best part of working with Facebook has been the cross-fertilization of ideas, people, and technology.
Brian Acton
#65. To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
Lord Acton
#66. Government rules the present. Literature rules the future.
Lord Acton
#67. A public man has no right to let his actions be determined by particular interests. He does the same thing as a judge who accepts a bribe. Like a judge he must consider what is right, not what is advantageous to a party or class.
Lord Acton
#68. History is not only a particular branch of knowledge, but a particular mode and method of knowledge in other branches.
Lord Acton
#69. The principle of the Inquisition was murderous ... The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.
Lord Acton
#70. I don't really want to be in the business of observing conversations.
Brian Acton
#71. When you look out the other way toward the stars you realize it's an awful long way to the next watering hole.
Loren Acton
#72. The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded.
Lord Acton
#74. I love thee as I love the tone
Of some soft-breathing flute
Whose soul is wak'd for me alone,
When all beside is mute.
Eliza Acton
#75. I think every acquisition is unique and different. The best strategy is to listen to the founders and follow their lead.
Brian Acton
#78. Fanaticism in religion is the alliance of the passions she condemns with the dogmas she professes.
Lord Acton
#79. Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.
Lord Acton
#80. There should be a law to the People besides its own will.
Lord Acton
#81. Acton sat beside him, a calming smile on his face and placed his hand on the man's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Now, tell me what you saw. And remember," he said, looking down at Garcia with a reassuring smile, "you're safe now.
J. Robert Kennedy
#82. Going public is 18-month process, while an acquisition is a 6-month process. Going public means going under so much scrutiny, regulatory approval, auditing, magnified 10 times. Having the stomach to do that isn't necessarily in my DNA. My DNA is building a product and a service.
Brian Acton
#83. Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.
Lord Acton
#84. By a series of violent shocks, the nations in succession have struggled to shake off the Past, to reverse the action of Time and the verdict of success, and to rescue the world from the reign of the dead.
John Acton
#85. There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.
Lord Acton
#86. Your insurance broker has your telephone number, but your insurance broker doesn't have your Facebook ID. I think they are very different modes of communication. Commingling them can come with risk and peril.
Brian Acton
#87. If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.
John Acton
#88. The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.
Lord Acton
#89. 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 realization of a political ideal; it is the discharge of a moral obligation.
Lord Acton
#90. Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.
Lord Acton
#92. Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
Lord Acton
#94. It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
Lord Acton
#95. Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.
John Acton
#96. 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.
Lord Acton
#97. Without wishing in the slightest degree to disparage the skill and labour of breadmakers by trade, truth compels us to assert our conviction of the superior wholesomeness of bread made in our own homes.
Eliza Acton
#98. Vegetables when not sufficiently cooked are know to be so exceedingly unwholesome and indigestible, that the custom of serving them 'crisp' should be altogether disregarded when health is considered of more importance than fashion.
Eliza Acton
#99. Ink was not invented to express our real feelings.
Lord Acton
