Great men are almost always bad men.
Lord ActonRead
Liberty is the harmony between the will and the law.
Interpretation
Liberty is achieved when personal desires align with legal frameworks.
This quote by Lord Acton emphasizes the concept of liberty as a state where an individual's will is in agreement with the laws governing society. True freedom is not merely the absence of constraints, but rather a condition where one's personal intentions and the established legal order coexist harmoniously, allowing for a balanced and just society.
In practice
In a debate about civil rights, one might use this quote to underscore the importance of aligning personal freedoms with societal laws.
Great men are almost always bad men.
Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.
He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
In sinning, each man sins against all, and each man is at least partly guilt for another's sin. There is no isolated sin.
Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not.
We hear tears loudly on this side of Heaven. What we don't take time to contemplate are the even louder cheers on the other side of death's valley.
Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.
Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace.
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