“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin
Sorry Mr. Franklin, they’re not listening...
that is a good one, I like this one too (even if it doesn’t fit exactly this particular subject... :) :
“[A] State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.”
- John Stuart Mill
I’m sure Ben Franklin adhered to the most draconian of laws when he visited France, then a totalitarian dictatorship.