Acton Quotes & Sayings

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

The biographies and autobiographies are on the whole more impressive than the fiction of the last two decades, but the freakish best sellers among them are least likely to withstand the test of time. — Harold Acton

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this. — Lord Acton

It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others. — Lord Acton

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is what makes information valuable. For knowledge to be useful, it must be acted upon. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1834 - 1902). All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797) A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950). We must never take our freedom for granted. — Al Zelczer

Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other. — Lord Acton

To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice. — Lord Acton

I think every acquisition is unique and different. The best strategy is to listen to the founders and follow their lead. — Brian Acton

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

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers. — Lord Acton

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

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

Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime ... — Lord Acton

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

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

The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding. — 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

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

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

Every class is unfit to govern. — Lord Acton

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

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

Building secure products actually makes for a safer world; many people in law enforcement may not agree with that. — Brian Acton

Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery. — Lord Acton

The greatest men, you can quote for everything. — John Acton

WhatsApp provides phone-number-based messaging, and people asked, 'Isn't that what SMS is?' Yes, but SMS is expensive, antiquated, and what WhatsApp did was modernize and level that playing field. For example, in Europe, if France wants to talk to Belgium, it's extraordinary costly because of border and telecom charges. — Brian Acton

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation
religion, education, and the distribution of wealth. — Lord Acton

A history that should pursue all the subtle threads from end to end might be eminently valuable, but not as a tribute to peace and conciliation. — Lord Acton

Towns were the nursery of freedom. — Lord Acton

There should be a law to the People besides its own will. — Lord Acton

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

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

Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force. — Lord Acton

Liberty is the prevention of control by others. — John Acton

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

I used to have a theory about photographing. It was a sense of getting in between two actions, or in between acton and repose. — Diane Arbus

Judge talent at its best and character at its worst. — Lord Acton

Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

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

Progress, the religion of those who have none. — Lord Acton

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power
power sufficient to interfere with property. — Lord Acton

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

The phone is one hundred, one hundred and ten years old. There was a middle period where the government had a broad ability to surveil, but if you look at human history in total, people evolved and civilizations evolved with private conversations and private speech. — Brian Acton

Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority. — Lord Acton

The light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be. — Lord Acton

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh. — Lord Acton

The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within. — Lord Acton

Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge. — Lord Acton

Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God. — Lord Acton

Every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply its rules to the standard of truth. — Lord Acton

Socialism means slavery. — Lord Acton

What chiefly concerns and alarms many of us are the problems arising from religious fanaticism. As long as large numbers of militant enthusiasts are persuaded that they alone have access to the truth, and that the rest of us are infidels, we remain under threat. Lord Acton's famous phrase about power can be used of another danger. Dogma tends to corrupt, and absolute dogma corrupts absolutely. — Anthony Storr

There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success. — Lord Acton

Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited. — Lord Acton

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

Guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own; and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing — Lord Acton

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

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

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions. — Lord Acton

If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict - and of tragedy - can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition. This gives its value to freedom as Acton conceived of it - as an end in itself, and not as a temporary need, arising out of our confused notions and irrational and disordered lives, a predicament which a panacea could one day put right — Isaiah Berlin

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

The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess. — Lord Acton

If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation. — John Acton

A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark. — Lord Acton

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

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. — Lord Acton

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

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

The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge. — Lord Acton

Learn as much by writing as by reading.
-Lord Acton — N.a.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

People want chat histories. They're a permanent testimony of a relationship. — Brian Acton

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate. But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power ... When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion. — Lord Acton

The best part of working with Facebook has been the cross-fertilization of ideas, people, and technology. — Brian Acton

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 often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism. — Lord Acton

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes is his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. — John Acton

Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil. — Lord Acton

Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism. — Friedrich Hayek

Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience. — Lord Acton

It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State
ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios
burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man ... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control. — Lord Acton

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

Judge talent at its best but character at its worst. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality. — Lord Acton

There's a certain degree of speculation that goes into valuations. In so far as the market supports a valuation, everyone who gets a great one deserves it, but they should also be cautious because that speculation is temporary. I saw Yahoo go from $100 billion to $10 billion. It's not a long-term measure. — Brian Acton

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. — John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money. — Lord Acton

Character is tested by true sentiments more than by conduct. A man is seldom better than his word. — Lord Acton

It's not 100 per cent clear to me what's working about Snapchat. — Brian Acton

I saw in States' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy ... Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. — Lord Acton

Uncle Acton spent the whole of his working life in India, for the simple reason that he gave up work very young. — Rosemary Sutcliff

Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty-but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's where life is; that's were all the good stuff is. — Loren Acton

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

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom. — Lord Acton

Some people take no mental exercise apart from jumping to conclusions. — Harold Acton

WhatsApp will bring Facebook another billion users. We will be a billion-user product. Whether there is a direct valuation or an indirect valuation, there is value, and Facebook understands that well. — Brian Acton

Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience
a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth. — Lord Acton