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Lord John Emerich Dalbery Acton, commonly referred to as Lord Acton, he is best known for the phrase "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." This famous statement, often quoted by critics of concentrated political authority, expresses Acton's basic philosophy. As an English Catholic, he expressed a belief in the sinful nature of people, of the tendency of all humans to want power and to use it to dominate and oppress others; therefore, he believed it good to limit the authority of any state or person, as holding power tends to "corrupt" an individual or to bring out their worst qualities (pride, arrogance, vanity, tyranny). Like Edmund Burke, he was critical of the Rousseau idea of powerful central government and of the brutal use of state power in the French Revolution. He appreciated the American and Puritan ideals of liberty of thought and freedom of conscience; Acton saw the British and American ideals of divided power, mixed governance, and pluralism as preventing tyranny and abuse of authority. Like James Madison's conception of countervailing forces and checks and balances in both society and the state, Lord Acton approved of wide distribution of power to preserve individual liberty. These liberal ideals made Acton a popular resource against 20th-century totalitarian regimes (Fascism and Communism).
Acton grew up in a Catholic English family of minor nobility and attended a university in Munich, Germany. In 1895, he became the regius professor of history at Cambridge University. He was familiar with leading British public figures, including Foreign Secretary Granville, Prime Minister Gladstone, and Queen Victoria. He saw the church as a check on state power and attended the Vatican Council in Rome, where he opposed the doctrine of papal infallibility in 1870. He edited the Catholic magazine, The Rambler. Through his students at Cambridge, Lord Acton greatly influenced ideas of liberty and pluralism in the 20th century.
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