There is no example of liberty established by Protestants resisting Catholics. The French tried it and failed. The Dutch in like manner. The victory … - John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. But it gave an immense impulse to absolutism by silencing the consciences of very religious kings, and made the good and the bad very much alike.

The worst criminals were not the men who did the deed. The crime of mobs and courtiers, infuriated by the lust of vengeance and of power, is not so strange a portent as the exultation of peaceful men, influenced by no present injury or momentary rage, but by the permanent and incurable perversion of moral sense wrought by a distorted piety.

The strongest of all the obstacles to progress, the reign of the dead.