"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised 'for the good of its victims' may be the most oppressive."
        —C. S. Lewis

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
        —James Madison

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other."
        —James Madison

"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
        —Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propoganda of fear."
        —General Douglas MacArthur

"Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government."
        —Sen. Robert Taft, (R) Ohio

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
        —Lord Acton (in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887)

"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it"
        —William Pitt the Younger, The Earl of Chatham and British Prime Minister
                               (in a speech to the UK House of Lords in 1770)

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
        —Thomas Jefferson

"That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
        —Theodore Roosevelt

"Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have."
        —Davy Crockett

"If it is boyish to believe that a human being should live free, then I'll gladly arrest my development and let the rest of the world grow up.
        —E. B. White (Essayist, philosopher and humorist best remembered for his children's titles
                                                      Stuart Little and Charlottes's Web)

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. . . ."
        —Henry David Thoreau