Great men are almost always bad men.
Lord ActonRead
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the ongoing struggle between the interests of the general populace and the power of financial institutions.
Lord Acton's quote underscores a historical and continuing conflict where common people often find themselves at odds with powerful banking institutions. This struggle revolves around issues of economic justice, wealth distribution, and the influence of banks on society, suggesting that such conflicts are an inevitable part of human history that must ultimately be addressed.
In practice
During a public speech about economic reforms, a speaker might use this quote to emphasize the importance of financial regulation.
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.
It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative.
Over the years, the U.S. economy has shown a remarkable ability to absorb shocks of all kinds, to recover, and to continue to grow. Flexible and efficient markets for labor and capital, an entrepreneurial tradition, and a general willingness to tolerate and even embrace technological and economic change all contribute to this resiliency.
All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.
Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial society -- and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State.
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.
There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant or when wages were as high, whether measured by the currency in which they are paid or by their power to supply the necessaries and comforts of life.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.