A Quote by Lord Acton

Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.

Lord Acton

Quote Topics

Absolute Absolute Power Best Central Central Government Curb Democracy Federalism Government Limited Majority Power Powers Thereby

Quote Author

Lord Acton
January 10, 1834 - June 19, 1902

I tell the story of eight forgotten founders, people like Canassatego, an Iroquois Indian Chief, who taught Benjamin Franklin about federalism, about the idea that you can form a confederacy in which the central power has only limited powers and local control is retained.

Mike Lee

Given the low level of competence among politicians, every American should become a libertarian. The government that governs least is certainly the best choice when fools, opportunists and grafters run it. When power is for sale, then the government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better.

Charley Reese

God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power.

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

When power is for sale, then government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better.

Charley Reese

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

The Republican majority, left to its own devices from 1995 to 2000, was a party committed to limited government and restoring the balances of federalism with the states. Clearly, President Bush has had a different vision, and that vision has resulted in education and welfare policies that have increased the size and scope of government.

Mike Pence

The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.

John Adams

Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.

Walter Lippmann

I feel that if people investigate the emergence of government, of State power - if they examine the logic of State power historically, and more specifically in the United States - they will find that the concept of limited government is not tenable once they adopt some type of libertarian principle.

Murray Bookchin

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

Henry David Thoreau

I think that people who believe in limited government would benefit greatly by studying the logic in government itself and the role of power as a corruptive mechanism in leading finally to unlimited government.

Murray Bookchin

In some small field each child should attain, within the limited range of its experience and observation, the power to draw a justly limited inference from observed facts.

Charles William Eliot

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Eric Hoffer

As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe that the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press.

Mike Pence

Team Obama is exploiting the power of high government office to intimidate lawful, peaceful contributors who support limited-government causes.

Michelle Malkin

A lot of times, actors give so much power to the producers and the producing companies because, quite frankly, they have it. But we don't take the limited power that we have, which the power you initially have is to say 'no.' But 'no' in a positive way.

Michael Cudlitz

A Quote by Lord Acton

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors