Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Plato  (427–347 BC)

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

Aristotle  (384–322 BC)

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Aristotle  (384–322 BC)

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites...

Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Edmund Burke  (1729–1797)

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

George Washington  (1732–1799)

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Thomas Jefferson  (1743–1826)

Remember, democracy never lasts long.  It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.  There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

John Adams  (1735–1826)

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.  From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years.  These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

Alexander Tytler  (1747–1813)
 (On the fall of Athenian republic)

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

John Quincy Adams  (1767–1848)

The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.

Alexis de Tocqueville  (1805–1859)

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe.  No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.  Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Winston Churchill  (1874–1965)
Hansard, November 11, 1947

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings.  The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill  (1874–1965)

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill  (1874–1965)

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

Sidney Hook  (1902–1989)

At the heart of the socialist vision is the notion that a compassionate society can create more humane living conditions for all through government 'planning' and control of the economy...

Idealist socialists create systems in which idealists are almost certain to lose and be superseded by those whose drive for power, and ruthlessness in achieving it, make them the 'fittest' to survive under a system where government power is the ultimate prize...

The issue is not what anyone intends but what consequences are in fact likely to follow.

Thomas Sowell  (Born 1930)