POWER CORRUPTS, ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY

"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 of the certainty of corruption by authority."

 

"Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality."

 

"Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force."

 

"Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance."

 

"Absolute power demoralizes." 

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO DL (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902) was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer.

Few recognized the dangers of political power as clearly as Lord Acton. He understood that rulers put their own interests above all and will do just about anything to stay in power. They routinely lie. They smear their competitors. They seize private assets. They destroy property. Sometimes they assassinate people, even mark multitudes for slaughter. In his essays and lectures, Acton defied the collectivist trend of his time to declare that political power was a source of evil, not redemption. He called socialism "the worst enemy freedom has ever had to encounter."

 

Acton sometimes rose to commanding eloquence when he affirmed that individual liberty is the moral standard by which governments must be judged. He believed "that liberty occupies the final summit . . . it is almost, if not altogether, the sign, and the prize, and the motive in the onward and upward advance of the race. . . . A people adverse to the institution of private property is without the first element of freedom. . . . Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end."

 

Although Acton increasingly stood alone, he was admired for his extraordinary knowledge of history. He transmitted to the English-speaking world the rigor of studying history as much as possible from original sources, pioneered by nineteenth-century German scholars. His estate at Cannes (France) had more than 3,000 books and manuscripts; his estate at Tegernsee (Bavaria), some 4,000; and Aldenham (Shropshire, England), almost 60,000. He marked thousands of passages he considered important. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Munich (1873), honorary Doctor of Laws from Cambridge University (1889) and honorary Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University (1890)—yet he never earned an academic degree in his life, not even a high school diploma.

 

Acton conveyed tremendous passion. "There was a magnetic quality in the tones of his voice," recalled one student who heard his Cambridge lectures. "Never before had a young man come into the presence of such intensity of conviction as was shown by every word Lord Acton spoke. It took possession of the whole being, and seemed to enfold it in its own burning flame. And the fires below on which it fed were, at least for those present, immeasurable. More than all else, it was perhaps this conviction that gave to Lord Acton's Lectures their amazing force and vivacity. He pronounced each sentence as if he were feeling it, poising it lightly, and uttering it with measured deliberation. His feeling passed to the audience, which sat enthralled."

https://fee.org/articles/lord-acton-political-power-corrupts/