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Quote#World

The worst criminals were not the men who did the deed. The crime of…

Quote byJohn Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton · 1834–1902

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869).

English (original)

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.

— John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

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