Quoth this and that...

"Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety." ~ Daniel Webster

"Republicans claim to hate government. Then they get elected and prove it." ~Bill Maher

"Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." ~ Samuel Adams

"Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty." ~ Hilaire Belloc

"If you think we are free today, you know nothing about tyranny and even less about freedom." ~ Tom Braun

"Once in power, those in power want to stay in power." ~ Spiderlegs

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." ~ Thomas Jefferson