Lord Acton Quotes Quotations

Lord Acton — British Historian born on January 10, 1834, died on June 19, 1902

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO, DL—known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronet from 1837 to 1869 and usually referred to simply as Lord Acton—was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet. He is perhaps best known for the remark, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." His key idea has been tested in laboratory settings under strongly incentivized conditions and with real manipulations of power and confirms what he has suggested: that power corrupts... (wikipedia)