Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned - the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.
Source: Letter to Mary Gladstone, 24 Apr 1881.
-- John Dalberg Acton, (Jan 10 1834-1902), English historian; He was a noted Christian liberal who edited The Rambler and planned the Cambridge Modern History.