Great men are almost always bad men.
Lord ActonRead
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
Interpretation
History should be based on factual evidence rather than subjective viewpoints.
Lord Acton's quote emphasizes the importance of relying on concrete documents and evidence to establish historical truths. It suggests that opinions can be misleading, and a sound understanding of history must be anchored in verifiable facts, thereby creating a more reliable narrative of past events.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of historical research.
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.
My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.
Listen my children and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that werenβt realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Look at how the British covered India with railroads, and it is easy to view them as modernisers. Look, however, at the abysmal levels of mass illiteracy in the subcontinent they left behind in 1947, and they appear rather differently.
Palestine is our unforgettable historic home. The very name would be a force of marvelous potency for summoning our people together.
As a Jew, there's a need to keep that atrocity alive. There were Catholics and gypsies and homosexuals who died in the Holocaust, too. It's amazing that people allowed this slaughter to take place. There's a need to make these films and reiterate it happened.
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