The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being
governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the
direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.
– Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Italian philosopher and theologian

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It
is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the
authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the
applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.
– Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

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I
think that every true reformer, every real friend of liberty, will
agree with me in saying that if we must erect safeguards, they should
be rather for the security of the individual than of the mass, and that
our chiefest care must be to train the majority to respect the rights
of the minority, to prevent the claims of the few from being trampled
under foot by the caprice or passion of the many.
– Richard
Cartwright — Source: in the Legislative Assembly, Canada, March 9,
1865; reproduced in Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian Gentles, and
William D. Gairdner (Eds.), Canada’s Founding Debates (Toronto:
Stoddart, 1999), p. 19

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Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the
voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the
path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of
terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives
in fear.
– Harry S Truman

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You see what power is — holding someone else’s fear in your hand and showing it to them!
– Amy Tan

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Conquered
states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their
own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The
first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside
there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live
under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in
them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the
conqueror.
– Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince